Traditional political spectrum
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Political spectrum
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| URL | https://Persagen.com/docs/political_ideologies-and-economic_systems.html |
| Sources | Persagen.com | Wikipedia | other sources (cited in situ) |
| Source URL | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_spectrum |
| Date published | 2021-09-24 |
| Curation date | 2021-09-24 |
| Curator | Dr. Victoria A. Stuart, Ph.D. |
| Modified | |
| Editorial practice | Refer here | Date format: yyyy-mm-dd |
A political spectrum is a system to characterize and classify different political positions in relation to one another. These positions sit upon one or more geometric axes that represent independent political dimensions. The expressions political compass and political map are used to refer to the political spectrum as well, especially to popular two-dimensional models of it.
Most long-standing spectra include the left-right dimension which originally referred to seating arrangements in the French parliament after the French Revolution (1789-1799), with radicals on the left and aristocrats on the right. While communism and socialism are usually regarded internationally as being on the left, conservatism and reactionism are generally regarded as being on the right.
Liberalism can mean different things in different contexts, being sometimes on the left (social liberalism) and other times on the right (conservative liberalism or classical liberalism). Those with an intermediate outlook are sometimes classified as centrists. Politics that rejects the conventional left-right political spectrum is often known as syncretic politics, although the label tends to mischaracterize positions that have a logical location on a two-axis spectrum because they seem randomly brought together on a one-axis left-right spectrum.
Political scientists have frequently noted that a single left-right axis is too simplistic and insufficient for describing the existing variation in political beliefs and included other axes. Although the descriptive words at polar opposites may vary, the axes of popular biaxial spectra are usually split between economic issues (on a left-right dimension) and socio-cultural issues (on an authority-liberty dimension).
Far-left politics are politics further to the left of the left-right political spectrum than the standard political left.
There are different definitions of the far-left. Some scholars define it as representing the left of social democracy while others limit it to anarchism, socialism, and communism (or any derivative of Marxism-Leninism). In certain instances, especially in the news media, the term characterizes groups that advocate for revolutionary anti-capitalism and anti-colonialism.
Extremist far-left politics can involve violent acts such as terrorism and the formation of far-left militant organizations meant to abolish capitalist systems and the upper ruling class. Far-left terrorism consists of groups that attempt to realize their radical ideals and bring about change through violence rather than established political processes.
Notable left-wing movements:
Left-wing politics supports social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition of social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in society whom its adherents perceive as disadvantaged relative to others as well as a belief that there are unjustified inequalities that need to be reduced or abolished. According to emeritus professor of economics Barry Clark, left-wing supporters "claim that human development flourishes when individuals engage in cooperative, mutually respectful relations that can thrive only when excessive differences in status, power, and wealth are eliminated."
Within the left-right political spectrum, Left and Right were coined during the French Revolution (1789-1799), referring to the seating arrangement in the French Estates General. Those who sat on the left generally opposed the Ancien Régime and the Bourbon monarchy and supported the French Revolution, the creation of a democratic republic and the secularisation of society while those on the right were supportive of the traditional institutions of the Old Regime. Usage of the term Left became more prominent after the restoration of the French monarchy in 1815, when it was applied to the Independents. The word wing was first appended to Left and Right in the late 19th century, usually with disparaging intent, and left-wing was applied to those who were unorthodox in their religious or political views.
The term Left was later applied to a number of movements, especially republicanism in France during the 18th century, followed by socialism, including anarchism, communism, the labour movement, Marxism, social democracy, and syndicalism in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Since then, the term left-wing has been applied to a broad range of movements, including the civil rights movement, feminist movement, LGBT rights movement, anti-war movement, and environmental movement - as well as a wide range of political parties.
"Left-wing politics in the United States"
Center-left politics (British English: centre-left politics) - also referred to as moderate-left politics - are political views that lean to the left-wing on the left-right political spectrum, but closer to the center than other left-wing politics. Those on the center-left believe in working within the established systems to improve social justice. The center-left promotes a degree of social equality that it believes is achievable through promoting equal opportunity. The center-left emphasizes that the achievement of equality requires personal responsibility in areas in control by the individual person through their abilities and talents as well as social responsibility in areas outside control by the person in their abilities or talents.
The center-left opposes a wide gap between the rich and the poor and supports moderate measures to reduce the economic gap, such as a progressive income tax, laws prohibiting child labour, minimum wage laws, laws regulating working conditions, limits on working hours and laws to ensure the workers' right to organize. The center-left typically claims that complete equality of outcome is not possible, but instead that equal opportunity improves a degree of equality of outcome in society.
In Europe, the center-left includes social democrats, progressives, and also some democratic socialists, greens, and the Christian left. Some variants of liberalism, especially social liberalism, are described as center-left, but many social liberals are in the center of the political spectrum as well.
Centrism is a political outlook or position that involves acceptance and/or support of a balance of social equality and a degree of social hierarchy, while opposing political changes which would result in a significant shift of society strongly to either the left or the right.
Both center-left politics and center-right politics involve a general association with Centrism that is combined with leaning somewhat to their respective sides of the left-right political spectrum. Various political ideologies, such as Christian democracy, and certain forms of social liberalism and classical liberalism, can be classified as centrist ones, as can the Third Way, a modern political movement that attempts to reconcile right-wing politics and left-wing politics by advocating for a synthesis of center-right economic platforms with some center-left social policies.
Center-right politics (British English: centre-right politics) - also referred to as moderate-right politics - lean to the right of the political spectrum, but are closer to the center than others. From the 1780s to the 1880s, there was a shift in the Western world of social class structure and the economy, moving away from the nobility and mercantilism, toward the upper class and capitalism. This general economic shift toward capitalism affected center-right movements, such as the Conservative Party of the United Kingdom, which responded by becoming supportive of capitalism.
The International Democrat Union is an alliance of center-right (as well as some further right-wing) political parties - including the UK Conservative Party, the Conservative Party of Canada, the Republican Party of the United States, the Liberal Party of Australia, the New Zealand National Party, and Christian democratic parties - which declares commitment to human rights as well as economic development.
Ideologies characterised as center-right include liberal conservatism and some variants of liberalism and Christian democracy, among others. The economic aspects of the modern center-right have been influenced by economic liberalism, generally supporting free markets, limited government spending, and other policies heavily associated with neoliberalism. The moderate right is neither universally socially conservative nor culturally liberal, and often combines both beliefs with support for civil liberties and elements of traditionalism.
Historical examples of center-right schools of thought include One Nation Conservatism in the United Kingdom, Red Tories in Canada, and Rockefeller Republicans in the United States. New Democrats also embraced several aspects of center-right policy, including balanced budgets, free trade, and welfare reform. These ideological factions contrast with far right policies and right-wing populism. They also tend to be more supportive of cultural liberalism and green conservatism than right-wing variants.
According to a 2019 study, center-right parties had approximately 27% of the vote share in 21 Western democracies in 2018. This was a decline from 37% in 1960.
Source: Wikipedia, 2021-09-26
Right-wing politics supports the view that certain social orders and hierarchies are inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this position on the basis of natural law, economics, or tradition. Hierarchy and inequality may be seen as natural results of traditional social differences or competition in market economies.
The term right-wing can generally refer to the section of a political party or system that advocates free enterprise and private ownership, and typically favours socially traditional ideas.
In Europe, economic conservatives are usually considered liberal, and the Right includes nationalists, idealists,
Notable attributes:
Far-right politics, also referred to as the extreme right or right-wing extremism, are politics further on the right of the left-right political spectrum than the standard political right, particularly in terms of being anti-communist, authoritarian, ultranationalist, and having
Historically used to describe the experiences of fascism and Nazism, today far-right politics include neo-fascism, Neo-Nazism, the Third Position, the alt-right, racial supremacism, and other ideologies or organizations that feature aspects of ultranationalist, chauvinist, xenophobic, theocratic, racist, homophobic, transphobic, or reactionary views.
Far-right politics has led to oppression, political violence, forced assimilation, ethnic cleansing, or genocide against groups of people based on their supposed inferiority, or their perceived threat to the native ethnic group, nation, state, national religion, dominant culture, or conservative social institutions.
Anarchism is a political philosophy and political movement that is sceptical of authority and rejects all involuntary, coercive forms of hierarchy. Anarchism calls for the abolition of the state - which it holds to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful. As a historically left-wing movement, placed on the farthest left of the political spectrum, anarchism is usually described alongside libertarian Marxism as the libertarian wing (libertarian socialism) of the socialist movement, and has a strong historical association with anti-capitalism and socialism.
The history of anarchism goes back to
Anarchism employs a diversity of tactics in order to meet its ideal ends which can be broadly separated into revolutionary and evolutionary tactics; there is significant overlap between the two, which are merely descriptive. Revolutionary tactics aim to bring down authority and state, having taken a violent turn in the past, while evolutionary tactics aim to prefigure what an anarchist society would be like. Anarchist thought, criticism, and praxis have played a part in diverse areas of human society. Anarchism has been both defended and criticised; criticism of anarchism include claims that it is internally inconsistent, violent, or utopian.
Authoritarianism is a form of government characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of a strong central power to preserve the political status quo, and reductions in the rule of law, separation of powers, and democratic voting. Political scientists have created many typologies describing variations of authoritarian forms of government. Authoritarian regimes may be either autocratic or oligarchic in nature and may be based upon the rule of a party or the military.
In an influential 1964 work, the political scientist Juan Linz defined authoritarianism as possessing four qualities:
Limited political pluralism, realized with constraints on the legislature, political parties, and interest groups.
Political legitimacy based upon appeals to emotion and identification of the regime as a necessary evil to combat "easily recognizable societal problems, such as underdevelopment or insurgency."
Minimal political mobilization, and suppression of anti-regime activities.
Ill-defined executive powers, often vague and shifting, which extends the power of the executive.
Minimally defined, an authoritarian government lacks (a) free and competitive direct elections to legislatures, (b) free and competitive direct or indirect elections for executives, or both. Broadly defined, authoritarian states include countries that lack civil liberties such as freedom of religion, or countries in which the government and the political opposition do not alternate in power at least once following free elections. Authoritarian states might contain nominally democratic institutions such as political parties, legislatures and elections which are managed to entrench authoritarian rule and can feature fraudulent, non-competitive elections. Since 1946, the share of authoritarian states in the international political system increased until the mid-1970s, but declined from then until the year 2000.
Autocracy is a system of government in which absolute power over a state is concentrated in the hands of one person, whose decisions are subject to neither external legal restraints nor regularized mechanisms of popular control (except perhaps for the implicit threat of coup d'état or other forms of rebellion).
In earlier times, the term autocrat was coined as a favorable description of a ruler, having some connection to the concept of "lack of conflicts of interests" as well as an indication of grandeur and power. This use of the term continued into modern times, as the Russian Emperor was styled "Autocrat of all the Russias" as late as the early 20th century. In the 19th century, Eastern and Central Europe were under autocratic monarchies within the territories of which lived diverse peoples.
Communism (from Latin communis: "common, universal") is a philosophical, social, political, and economic ideology and movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, namely a socioeconomic order structured upon the ideas of common ownership of the means of production and the absence of social classes, money, and the state. Communism is a specific, yet distinct, form of socialism. Communists agree on the withering away of the state but disagree on the means to this end, reflecting a distinction between a more libertarian approach of communization, revolutionary spontaneity, and workers' self-management, and a more vanguardist or Communist party-driven approach through the development of a constitutional socialist state.
Variants of communism have been developed throughout history, including anarcho-communism, Leninism, Stalinism, and Maoism. Communism includes a variety of schools of thought which broadly include Marxism and libertarian communism, as well as the political ideologies grouped around both, all of which share the analysis that the current order of society stems from capitalism, its economic system and mode of production, namely that in this system there are two major social classes, the relationship between these two classes is exploitative, and that this situation can only ultimately be resolved through a social revolution. The two classes are the proletariat (the working class), who make up the majority of the population within society and must work to survive, and the bourgeoisie (the capitalist class), a small minority who derives profit from employing the working class through private ownership of the means of production. According to this analysis, revolution would put the working class in power and in turn establish social ownership of the means of production which is the primary element in the transformation of society towards a communist mode of production.
In the 20th century, Communist governments espousing Marxism-Leninism and its variants came into power in parts of the world, first in the Soviet Union with the Russian Revolution of 1917, and then in portions of Eastern Europe, Asia, and a few other regions after World War II. Along with social democracy, communism became the dominant political tendency within the international socialist movement by the 1920s. Criticism of communism can be divided into two broad categories, namely that which concerns itself with the practical aspects of 20th century Communist states and that which concerns itself with communist principles and theory. Several academics and economists, among other scholars, posit that the Soviet model under which these nominally Communist states in practice operated was not an actual communist economic model in accordance with most accepted definitions of communism as an economic theory but in fact a form of state capitalism, or non-planned administrative-command system.
Marxism is a method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development - better known as historical materialism - to understand class relations and social conflict, as well as a dialectical perspective to view social transformation. Marxism originates from the works of 19th-century German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. As Marxism has developed over time into various branches and schools of thought, there is currently no single definitive Marxist theory.
Some Marxist schools of thought place greater emphasis on certain aspects of classical Marxism, while rejecting or modifying other aspects. Some schools have sought to combine Marxian concepts and non-Marxian concepts which has then led to contradictory conclusions. It has been argued that there is a movement toward the recognition of historical materialism and dialectical materialism as the fundamental conceptions of all Marxist schools of thought. This view is rejected by some post-Marxists such as Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, who claim that history is not only determined by the mode of production, but also by consciousness and will.
Marxism has had a profound impact on global academia, having influenced many fields, including anthropology, archaeology, art theory, criminology, cultural studies, economics, education, ethics, film theory, geography, historiography, literary criticism, media studies, philosophy, political science, psychology, science studies, sociology, urban planning, and theater.
In Marxist philosophy, cultural hegemony is the dominance of a
In
Marxism-Leninism is a communist ideology and was the main communist movement throughout the 20th century. It was the formal name of the official state ideology adopted by the Soviet Union, its satellite states in the Eastern Bloc, and various self-declared scientific socialist regimes in the Non-Aligned Movement and Third World during the Cold War, as well as the Communist International after Bolshevisation. Today, Marxism-Leninism is the ideology of several communist parties and remains the official ideology of the ruling parties of China, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam as unitary one-party socialist republics, and of Nepal in a multiparty democracy. Generally, Marxist-Leninists support proletarian internationalism and socialist democracy - and oppose anarchism, fascism, imperialism, and liberal democracy.
Marxism-Leninism holds that a two-stage communist revolution is needed to replace capitalism. A vanguard party, organised hierarchically through democratic centralism, would seize power "on behalf of the proletariat", and establish a communist party-led socialist state, which it claims to represent the dictatorship of the proletariat. The state controls the economy and means of production, suppresses the bourgeoisie, counter-revolution, and opposition, promotes collectivism in society, and paves the way for an eventual communist society, which would be both classless and stateless. Due to its state-oriented approach, Marxist-Leninist states have been commonly referred to by Western academics as Communist states.
As an ideology and practice, it was developed by Joseph Stalin in the 1920s based on his understanding and synthesis of orthodox Marxism and Leninism. After the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924, Marxism-Leninism became a distinct movement in the Soviet Union when Stalin and his supporters gained control of the party. It rejected the common notions among Western Marxists of world revolution, as a prerequisite for building socialism, in favour of the concept of socialism in one country. According to its supporters, the gradual transition from capitalism to socialism was signified by the introduction of the first five-year plan and the 1936 Soviet Constitution. By the late 1920s, Stalin established ideological orthodoxy among the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), the Soviet Union, and the Communist International to establish universal Marxist-Leninist praxis. The formulation of the Soviet version of dialectical and historical materialism in the 1930s by Stalin and his associates, such as in Stalin's book Dialectical and Historical Materialism, became the official Soviet interpretation of Marxism, and was taken as example by Marxist-Leninists in other countries. In the late 1930s, Stalin's official textbook History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) (1938) popularised Marxism-Leninism as a term.
The internationalism of Marxist-Leninist socialism in one country was expressed in supporting revolutions in other countries, initially through the Communist International and then through the concept of socialist-leaning countries after de-Stalinisation. The establishment of other Communist states after World War II resulted in Sovietisation, and these Communist-led states tended to follow the Soviet Marxist-Leninist model of five-year plans and rapid industrialisation, political centralisation, and repression. During the Cold War, Marxism-Leninism was a driving force in international relations for most of the 20th century. With the death of Stalin and de-Stalinisation, Marxism-Leninism underwent several revisions and adaptations such as Guevarism, Ho Chi Minh Thought, Hoxhaism, Maoism, socialism with Chinese characteristics, and Titoism. This also caused several splits between Marxist-Leninist states, resulting in the Tito-Stalin split, the Sino-Soviet split, and the Sino-Albanian split. The socio-economic nature of Marxist-Leninist states, especially that of the Soviet Union during the Stalin era, has been much debated, varyingly being labelled a form of bureaucratic collectivism, state capitalism, state socialism, or a totally unique mode of production. The Eastern Bloc, including Marxist-Leninist states in Central and Eastern Europe as well as the Third World socialist regimes, have been variously described as "bureaucratic-authoritarian systems", and China's socio-economic structure has been referred to as "nationalistic state capitalism."
Criticism of Marxism-Leninism largely overlaps with criticism of communist party rule and mainly focuses on the actions and policies implemented by Marxist-Leninist leaders, most notably Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Pol Pot. In practice, Marxist-Leninist states have been marked by a high degree of centralised control by the state and communist party, political repression, state atheism, collectivisation, and use of forced labour and labour camps - as well as free universal education and healthcare, low unemployment and lower prices for certain goods. Historians such as Silvio Pons and Robert Service stated that repression and totalitarianism came from Marxist-Leninist ideology. Historians such as Michael Geyer and Sheila Fitzpatrick have put forward other explanations and criticise the focus on the upper levels of society and use of Cold War concepts such as totalitarianism which have obscured the reality of the system. While the emergence of the Soviet Union as the world's first nominally Communist state led to communism's widespread association with Marxism-Leninism and the Soviet model, several academics and economists, among other scholars, have stated that the Marxist-Leninist model was in practice a form of state capitalism, or a non-planned administrative-command system or command economy.
Adolf Hitler's policies and orders both directly and indirectly resulted in the deaths of about 50 million people in Europe. Benito Mussolini was a dictator who marked the beginning of "Fascism" in Europe.
A dictatorship is a form of government characterized by a single leader (dictator) or group of leaders that hold government power promised to the people and little or no toleration for political pluralism or independent media. In most dictatorships, the country's constitution promise citizens rights and the freedom to free and democratic elections; sometimes, it also mentions that all these aforementioned rights will be granted to the people, but this is not always the case. As democracy is a form of government in which "those who govern are selected through periodically contested elections (in years)", dictatorships are not democracies.
With the advent of the 19th and 20th centuries, dictatorships and constitutional democracies emerged as the world's two major forms of government, gradually eliminating monarchies with significant political power, the most widespread form of government in the pre-industrial era. Typically, in a dictatorial regime, the leader of the country is identified with the title of dictator; although, their formal title may more closely resemble something similar to leader. A common aspect that characterized dictatorship is taking advantage of their strong personality, usually by suppressing freedom of thought and speech of the masses, in order to maintain complete political and social supremacy and stability. Dictatorships and totalitarian societies generally employ political
Fascism is a form of far-right, authoritarian ultranationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and strong regimentation of society and of the economy, which came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe. The first fascist movements emerged in Italy during World War I, before spreading to other European countries. Opposed to anarchism, democracy , liberalism, and Marxism, fascism is placed on the far right-wing within the traditional left-right spectrum.
Fascists saw World War I as a revolution that brought massive changes to the nature of war, society, the state, and technology. The advent of total war and the total mass mobilization of society had broken down the distinction between civilians and combatants. A military citizenship arose in which all citizens were involved with the military in some manner during the war. The war had resulted in the rise of a powerful state capable of mobilizing millions of people to serve on the front lines and providing economic production and logistics to support them, as well as having unprecedented authority to intervene in the lives of citizens.
Fascists believe that liberal democracy is obsolete and regard the complete mobilization of society under a totalitarian one-party state as necessary to prepare a nation for armed conflict and to respond effectively to economic difficulties. A fascist state is led by a strong leader (such as a dictator) and a martial law government composed of the members of the governing fascist party to forge national unity and maintain a stable and orderly society. Fascism rejects assertions that violence is automatically negative in nature and views imperialism, political violence and war as means that can achieve national rejuvenation. Fascists advocate a mixed economy, with the principal goal of achieving autarky (national economic self-sufficiency) through protectionist and economic interventionist policies. The extreme authoritarianism and nationalism of fascism often manifests a belief in racial purity or a master race, usually synthesized with some variant of racism or bigotry of a demonized "Other"; the idea of racial purity has motivated fascist regimes to commit massacres, forced sterilizations, genocides, mass killings, or forced deportations against a perceived "Other".
Since the end of World War II in 1945, few parties have openly described themselves as fascist, and the term is instead now usually used pejoratively by political opponents. The descriptions of neo-fascist or post-fascist are sometimes applied more formally to describe contemporary parties of the far-right with ideologies similar to, or rooted in, 20th-century fascist movements.
Neo-fascism is a post-World War II ideology that includes significant elements of fascism. Neo-fascism usually includes ultranationalism, racial supremacy, populism, authoritarianism, nativism, xenophobia, and anti-immigration sentiment as well as opposition to liberal democracy, parliamentarianism, liberalism, Marxism, communism, and socialism.
Allegations that a group is neo-fascist may be hotly contested, especially when the term is used as a political epithet. Some post-World War II regimes have been described as neo-fascist due to their authoritarian nature, and sometimes due to their fascination with and sympathy towards fascist ideology and rituals. Post-fascism is a label that has been applied to several European political parties which espouse a modified form of fascism and participate in constitutional politics.
Imperialism is a policy or ideology of extending the rule over peoples and other countries, for extending political and economic access, power and control, often through employing hard power, especially military force, but also soft power. While related to the concepts of colonialism and empire, imperialism is a distinct concept that can apply to other forms of expansion and many forms of government.
Oligarchy (from Greek "ὀλιγαρχία" ("oligarkhía"); from "ὀλίγος" ("olígos") "few", and "ἄρχω" ("arkho") "to rule or to command") is a form of power structure in which power rests with a small number of people. These people may or may not be distinguished by one or several characteristics, such as nobility, fame, wealth, education, or corporate, religious, political, or military control.
Throughout history, oligarchies have often been tyrannical, relying on public obedience or oppression to exist. Aristotle pioneered the use of the term as meaning rule by the rich, for which another term commonly used today is plutocracy. In the early 20th century Robert Michels developed the theory that democracies, like all large organizations, have a tendency to turn into oligarchies. In his "Iron law of oligarchy", Robert Michels suggests that the necessary division of labor in large organizations leads to the establishment of a ruling class mostly concerned with protecting their own power.
See also:
A plutocracy (Greek: "πλοῦτος", "ploutos", "wealth" and "κράτος", "kratos", "power") or plutarchy is a society that is ruled or controlled by people of great wealth or income. The first known use of the term in English dates from 1631. Unlike systems such as democracy, liberalism, socialism, communism, or anarchism, plutocracy is not rooted in an established political philosophy.
Theocracy is a form of government in which a deity of some type is recognized as the supreme ruling authority, giving divine guidance to human intermediaries that manage the day-to-day affairs of the government.
Leaders who have been described as totalitarian rulers include Joseph Stalin (former General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union); Adolf Hitler (former Führer of Nazi Germany); Mao Zedong (former Chairman of the Communist Party of China); Benito Mussolini (former Prime Minister of Fascist Italy); and Kim Il-sung (the Eternal President of the Republic of North Korea).
Totalitarianism is a concept which is used in academia and politics to describe a form of government and a political system that prohibits all opposition parties, outlaws individual opposition to the state and its claims, and exercises an extremely high degree of control over public and private life. It is regarded as the most extreme and complete form of authoritarianism. In totalitarian states, political power is often held by autocrats, such as dictators and absolute monarchs, who employ all-encompassing campaigns in which
As a political ideology, totalitarianism is a distinctly modernist phenomenon, and it has complex historical roots. Philosopher Karl Popper traced its roots to Plato, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's conception of the state, and the political philosophy of Karl Marx - although his conception of totalitarianism has been criticized in academia, and remains highly controversial. Other philosophers and historians such as Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer trace the origin of totalitarian doctrines to the Age of Enlightenment, especially to the anthropocentrist idea that "Man has become the master of the world, a master unbound by any links to nature, society, and history." In the 20th century, the idea of absolute state power was first developed by Italian Fascists, and concurrently in Germany by a jurist and Nazi academic named Carl Schmitt during the Weimar Republic in the 1920s. The founder of Italian Fascism, Benito Mussolini, defined fascism as such: "Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state." Schmitt used the term Totalstaat (literally "Total state") in his influential 1927 work titled The Concept of the Political, which described the legal basis of an all-powerful state.
Totalitarian regimes are different from other authoritarian regimes, as the latter denotes a state in which the single power holder, usually an individual dictator, a committee, a military junta, or an otherwise small group of political elites, monopolizes political power. A totalitarian regime may attempt to control virtually all aspects of social life, including the economy, the education system, arts, science, and the private lives and morals of citizens through the use of an elaborate ideology. It can also mobilize the whole population in pursuit of its goals.
A tyrant (from Ancient Greek "τύραννος", "tyrannos"), in the modern English usage of the word, is an absolute ruler who is unrestrained by law, or one who has usurped a legitimate ruler's sovereignty. Often portrayed as cruel, tyrants may defend their positions by resorting to repressive means. The original Greek term meant an absolute sovereign who came to power without constitutional right, yet the word had a neutral connotation during the Archaic and early Classical periods. However, Greek philosopher Plato saw tyrannos as a negative word, and on account of the decisive influence of philosophy on politics, its negative connotations only increased, continuing into the Hellenistic period.
The philosophers Plato and Aristotle defined a tyrant as a person who rules without law, using extreme and cruel methods against both his own people and others. The Encyclopédie defined the term as a usurper of sovereign power who makes "his subjects the victims of his passions and unjust desires, which he substitutes for laws". In the late fifth and fourth centuries BC, a new kind of tyrant, one who had the support of the military, arose - specifically in Sicily.
One can apply accusations of tyranny to a variety of types of government:
to government by one individual (in an autocracy)
to government by a minority (in an oligarchy, tyranny of the minority)
to government by a majority (in a democracy, tyranny of the majority)
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production, and their operation for economic profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, a price system, private property - and the recognition of property rights, voluntary exchange, and wage labor. In a capitalist market economy, decision-making and investments are determined by owners of wealth, property, or production ability in capital and financial markets - whereas prices and the distribution of goods and services are mainly determined by competition in goods and services markets.
Economists, historians, political economists and sociologists have adopted different perspectives in their analyses of capitalism and have recognized various forms of it in practice. These include Laissez-faire or free-market capitalism, state capitalism, and welfare capitalism. Different forms of capitalism feature varying degrees of free markets, public ownership, obstacles to free competition, and state-sanctioned social policies. The degree of competition in markets and the role of intervention and regulation, as well as the scope of state ownership, vary across different models of capitalism. The extent to which different markets are free and the rules defining private property are matters of politics and policy. Most of the existing capitalist economies are mixed economies that combine elements of free markets with state intervention and in some cases economic planning.
Market economies have existed under many forms of government and in many different times, places and cultures. Modern capitalist societies developed in Western Europe in a process that led to the Industrial Revolution. Capitalist systems with varying degrees of direct government intervention have since become dominant in the Western world, and continue to spread. Economic growth is a characteristic tendency of capitalist economies.
Critics of capitalism argue that it concentrates power in the hands of a minority capitalist class that exists through the exploitation of the majority working class and their labor; prioritizes profit over social good, natural resources and the environment; is an engine of inequality, corruption and economic instabilities; is anti-democratic; and that many are not able to access its purported benefits and freedoms, such as freely investing. Supporters argue that it provides better products and innovation through competition, promotes pluralism and decentralization of power, disperses wealth to people who are able to invest in useful enterprises based on market demands, allows for a flexible incentive system where efficiency and sustainability are priorities to protect capital, creates strong economic growth, and yields productivity and prosperity that greatly benefit society.
The Christian left is a range of center-left and left-wing left-wing Christian political and Christian social movements that largely embrace social justice viewpoints and uphold a social doctrine or social gospel.
Given the inherent diversity in international political thought, the term Christian left can have different meanings and applications in different countries. While there is much overlap, the Christian left is distinct from liberal Christianity, meaning not all Christian leftists are liberal Christians and vice versa. Christian anarchism, Christian communism, and Christian socialism are subsects of the socialist Christian left, although it also includes more moderate Christian left-liberal and social-democratic viewpoints.
The Christian right (the religious right) are Christian political factions that are characterized by their strong support of socially conservative policies. Christian conservatives seek to influence politics and public policy with their interpretation of the teachings of Christianity.
In the United States, the Christian right is an informal coalition formed around a core of conservative evangelical Protestants and Roman Catholics. The Christian right draws additional support from politically conservative mainline Protestants and members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The movement has its roots in American politics going back as far as the 1940s and has been especially influential since the 1970s. Its influence draws from grassroots activism as well as from focus on social issues and the ability to motivate the electorate around those issues.
The Christian right is notable for advancing socially conservative positions on issues including school prayer, intelligent design, embryonic stem cell research, homosexuality, euthanasia, contraception, sex education, abortion, and pornography. Although the term Christian right is most commonly associated with politics in the United States, similar Christian conservative groups can be found in the political cultures of other Christian-majority nations.
Cultural conservatism is described as the protection of the cultural heritage of a nation state, or of a culture not defined by state boundaries. Cultural conservatism is sometimes concerned with the preservation of a language, such as French in Quebec (Canada), and other times with the preservation of an ethnic group's culture such as Native Americans [indigenous peoples].
In the United States, the term cultural conservative may imply a conservative position in the culture wars. Because cultural conservative (according to the compass theory) expresses the social dimension of
Fiscal conservatism is a political philosophy and economic philosophy regarding fiscal policy and fiscal responsibility advocating low taxes, reduced government spending, and minimal government debt. Deregulation, free trade, privatization, and tax cuts are the defining qualities of fiscal conservatism. Fiscal conservatism follows the same philosophical outlook of classical liberalism.
The term fiscal conservatism has its origins in the era of the American New Deal during the 1930s as a result of the policies initiated by modern liberals [social liberals], when many classical liberalism started calling themselves
Fiscal conservatives form one of the three legs of the traditional American
Because of its close proximity to the United States, the term fiscal conservative has entered the lexicon in Canada. In many other countries, economic liberalism - or simply liberalism - is used to describe what Americans call fiscal conservatism.
Movement conservatism is an inside term describing
R. Emmett Tyrrell, a prominent right-wing writer, says, "the conservatism that, when it made its appearance in the early 1950s, was called the New Conservatism and for the past fifty or sixty years has been known as 'movement conservatism' by those of us who have espoused it." Political scientists Doss and Roberts say that "The term movement conservatives refers to those people who argue that big government constitutes the most serious problem.... Movement conservatives blame the growth of the administrative state for destroying individual initiative." Historian Allan J. Lichtman traces the term to a memorandum written in February 1961 by William A. Rusher, the publisher of National Review, to William F. Buckley Jr., envisioning National Review as not just "the intellectual leader of the American Right," but more grandly of "the Western Right." Rusher envisioned philosopher kings would function as "movement conservatives".
Recent examples of writers using the term "movement conservatism" include Sam Tanenhaus, Paul Gottfried, and Jonathan Riehl. The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman devoted a chapter of his book The Conscience of a Liberal (2007) to the movement, writing that movement conservatives gained control of the Republican Party starting in the 1970s and that Ronald Reagan was the first movement conservatism elected president.
[theConversation, 2022-02-13] Canada should be preparing for the end of American democracy.
[Straight.com, 2022-02-07] Right-wing backlash on display in both the federal Conservative and B.C. Liberal parties.
[theNation.com, 2021-11-26] Who Is the University of Austin For? The project's uphill battle points to a deeper contradiction within what might be called neo-neoconservatism.
[theAtlantic.com, 2021-11-18] The Terrifying Future of the American Right. What I saw at the National Conservatism Conference.
[MotherJones.com, 2021-11-26] How Dangerous Is Peter Thiel? In a recent speech, the tech billionaire gave us a frightening look at his worldview.
[19thNews.org, 2021-11-16] Librarians are resisting censorship of children's books by LGBTQ+ and Black authors. Attempts to keep books out of school libraries aren't new, but there has been a recent increase in political challenges to literature.
[NPR.org, 2021-11-13] More Republican leaders try to ban books on race, LGBTQ issues.
Traditionalist conservatism, also referred to as classical conservatism, traditional conservatism or traditionalism, is a political philosophy and moral philosophy emphasizing the need for the principles of a transcendent moral order, manifested through certain natural laws to which society ought to conform in a prudent manner. Traditionalist conservatism is based on the political philosophies of Aristotle and Edmund Burke. Traditionalists emphasize the bonds of social order and the defense of ancestral institutions over what it considers excessive individualism.
Traditionalist conservatism places a strong emphasis on the notions of custom, convention, and tradition. Theoretical reason is derided, and is considered against practical reason. The state is also seen as a communal enterprise with spiritual and organic qualities. Traditionalists believe that any change is not the result of intentional reasoned thought but flows naturally out of the traditions of the community. Leadership, authority and hierarchy are seen as natural products. Traditionalism developed throughout 18th-century Europe, particularly as a response to the disorder of the English Civil War, and the radicalism of the French Revolution. In the middle of the 20th century, traditionalist conservatism started to organize itself in earnest as an intellectual and political force.
Democracy (Greek: "δημοκρατία", "dēmokratiā", from "dēmos" "people" and "kratos" "rule") is a form of government in which the people have the authority to deliberate and decide legislation ("direct democracy"), or to choose governing officials to do so ("representative democracy"). In each case the process is free (as in people can make the choice freely, they or the candidate can advocate for their position(s) through speech and assembly and people can form organizations to advocate for their positon(s)). Who is considered part of "the people" and how authority is shared among or delegated by the people has changed over time and at different rates in different countries, but over time more and more of a democratic country's inhabitants have generally been included. Cornerstones of democracy include freedom of assembly, freedom of association and freedom of speech, inclusiveness and equality, membership, consent, voting, right to life, and minority rights
The notion of democracy has evolved over time considerably. The original form of democracy was a direct democracy. The most common form of democracy today is a representative democracy, where the people elect government officials to govern on their behalf such as in a parliamentary democracy or presidential democracy.
Prevalent day-to-day decision making of democracies is the majority rule, though other decision making approaches like supermajority and consensus have also been integral to democracies. They serve the crucial purpose of inclusiveness and broader legitimacy on sensitive issues - counterbalancing majoritarianism - and therefore mostly take precedence on a constitutional level. In the common variant of liberal democracy, the powers of the majority are exercised within the framework of a representative democracy, but the constitution limits the majority and protects the minority - usually through the enjoyment by all of certain individual rights, e.g. freedom of speech or freedom of association.
The term democracy appeared in the 5th century BC to denote the political systems then existing in Greek city-states, notably Classical Athens, to mean "rule of the people", in contrast to aristocracy ("ἀριστοκρατία", "aristokratía"), meaning "rule of an elite". Western democracy, as distinct from that which existed in antiquity, is generally considered to have originated in city-states such as those in Classical Athens and the Roman Republic, where various schemes and degrees of enfranchisement of the free male population were observed before the form disappeared in the Western world at the beginning of late antiquity. In virtually all democratic governments throughout ancient and modern history, democratic citizenship consisted of an elite class until full enfranchisement was won for all adult citizens in most modern democracies through the suffrage movements of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Democracy contrasts with forms of government where power is either held by an individual, as in autocratic systems like absolute monarchy, or where power is held by a small number of individuals, as in an oligarchy - oppositions inherited from ancient Greek philosophy. Karl Popper defined democracy in contrast to dictatorship or tyranny, focusing on opportunities for the people to control their leaders and to oust them without the need for a revolution.
Identity politics is a political approach wherein people of a particular gender, religion, race, social background, class or other identifying factors, develop political agendas that are based upon theoretical interacting systems of oppression that may affect their lives and come from their various identities. Identity politics centers the lived experiences of those facing various systems of oppression to better understand the ways in which racial, economic, sex-based, gender-based, and other forms of oppression are linked and to ensure that political agendas and political actions arising out of identity politics leave no one behind.
Contemporary applications of identity politics describe people of specific race, ethnicity, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, economic class, disability status, education, religion, language, profession, political party, veteran status, and geographic location. These identity labels are not mutually exclusive but are in many cases compounded into one when describing hyper-specific groups, a concept known as intersectionality. An example is that of African-American, homosexual, women - who constitute a particular hyper-specific identity class.
See also: Laissez-faire capitalism
Laissez-faire (from French: "laissez faire", literally "let do") is an economic system in which transactions between private groups of people are free from or almost free from any form of economic interventionism such as regulation and subsidies. As a system of thought, laissez-faire rests on the axioms that the individual is the basic unit in society and has a natural right to freedom; that the physical order of nature is a harmonious and self-regulating system; and that corporations are creatures of the state and therefore the citizens must watch them closely due to their propensity to disrupt the Smithian spontaneous order.
These axioms constitute the basic elements of laissez-faire thought. Another basic principle holds that markets should be competitive, a rule that the early advocates of laissez-faire always emphasized. With the aims of maximizing freedom and of allowing markets to self-regulate, early advocates of laissez-faire proposed an impôt unique, a tax on land rent (similar to Georgism) to replace all taxes that they saw as damaging welfare by penalizing production.
Proponents of laissez-faire argue for a complete separation of government from the economic sector. The phrase laissez-faire is part of a larger French phrase and literally translates to "let [it/them] do", but in this context the phrase usually means to "let it be" and in expression "laid back." Although never practiced with full consistency, laissez-faire capitalism emerged in the mid-18th century and was further popularized by Adam Smith's book The Wealth of Nations. It was most prominent in Britain and the United States during this period but both economies became steadily more controlled throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. While associated with capitalism in common usage, there are also non-capitalist forms of laissez-faire, including some forms of market socialism.
The left-right political spectrum is a system of classifying political positions characteristic of left-right politics, ideologies and parties with emphasis placed on issues of social equality and social hierarchy. In addition to positions on the Left and on the Right, there are centrists or moderates who are not strongly aligned with either extreme. There are those who view the left-right political spectrum as overly simplistic, and who reject this method of classifying political stands, suggesting instead some other system, such as a two-dimensional rather than a one-dimensional description.
On this type of political spectrum, left-wing politics and right-wing politics are often presented as opposed, although a particular individual or group may take a left-wing stance on one matter and a right-wing stance on another; and some stances may overlap and be considered either left-wing or right-wing depending on the ideology. In France, where the terms originated, the left has been called "the party of movement" and the right "the party of order."
Liberalism is a political philosophy and moral philosophy based on liberty, consent of the governed, and equality before the law. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but they generally support individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), democracy, secularism, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, and a market economy. Yellow is the political colour most commonly associated with liberalism.
Liberalism became a distinct movement in the Age of Enlightenment, when it became popular among Western philosophers and economists. Liberalism sought to replace the norms of hereditary privilege, state religion, absolute monarchy, the divine right of kings, and traditional conservatism with representative democracy and the rule of law. Liberals also ended mercantilist policies, royal monopolies, and other barriers to trade, instead promoting free trade and marketization. Philosopher John Locke is often credited with founding liberalism as a distinct tradition, based on the social contract, arguing that each man has a natural right to life, liberty and property, and governments must not violate these rights. While the British liberal tradition has emphasized expanding democracy, French liberalism has emphasized rejecting authoritarianism, and is linked to nation-building.
Leaders in the British American Revolution of 1688, the American Revolution of 1776 and the French Revolution of 1789 used liberal philosophy to justify the armed overthrow of royal tyranny. Liberalism started to spread rapidly especially after the French Revolution. The 19th century saw liberal governments established in nations across Europe and South America, whereas it was well-established alongside republicanism in the United States. In Victorian Britain, it was used to critique the political establishment, appealing to science and reason on behalf of the people. During 19th and early 20th century, liberalism in the Ottoman Empire and Middle East influenced periods of reform such as the Tanzimat and Al-Nahda, as well as the rise of constitutionalism, nationalism, and secularism. These changes, along with other factors, helped to create a sense of crisis within Islam, which continues to this day, leading to Islamic revivalism. Before 1920, the main ideological opponents of liberalism were communism, conservatism, and socialism - but liberalism then faced major ideological challenges from fascism and Marxism-Leninism as new opponents. During the 20th century, liberal ideas spread even further, especially in Western Europe, as liberal democracies found themselves as the winners' in both world wars.
In Europe and North America, the establishment of social liberalism (often called simply liberalism in the United States) became a key component in the expansion of the welfare state. Today, liberal parties continue to wield power and influence throughout the world. The fundamental elements of contemporary society have liberal roots. The early waves of liberalism popularised economic individualism while expanding constitutional government and parliamentary authority. Liberals sought and established a constitutional order that prized important individual freedoms, such as freedom of speech and freedom of association; an independent judiciary, and public trial by jury; and the abolition of aristocratic privileges. Later waves of modern liberal thought and struggle were strongly influenced by the need to expand civil rights. Liberals have advocated gender and racial equality in their drive to promote civil rights and a global civil rights movement in the 20th century achieved several objectives towards both goals. Other goals often accepted by liberals include universal suffrage, and universal access to education.
Source: Wikipedia, 2021-09-27
Classical liberalism is a political ideology and a branch of liberalism that advocates free market, civil liberties under the rule of law with an emphasis on minarchism, economic freedom, and cultural liberalism. It was developed in the early 19th century, building on ideas from the previous century as a response to urbanization, and to the Industrial Revolution in Europe and North America.
Notable liberal individuals whose ideas contributed to classical liberalism include John Locke, Jean-Baptiste Say, Thomas Robert Malthus, and David Ricardo. It drew on classical economics, especially the economic ideas as espoused by Adam Smith in Book One of The Wealth of Nations, and on a belief in natural law, progress, and utilitarianism.
Until the Great Depression and the rise of social liberalismeconomic liberalism. As a term, classical liberalism was applied in retrospect to distinguish earlier 19th-century liberalism from social liberalism.
Cultural liberalism (social liberalism in the United States) is a liberal view of society that stresses the freedom of individuals from cultural norms, and in the words of Henry David Thoreau is often expressed as the right to "march to the beat of a different drummer."
In following the harm principle, cultural liberals believe that society should not impose any specific code of behavior and they see themselves as defending the moral rights of nonconformists to express their own identity however they see fit as long as they do not harm anyone else. The culture wars in politics are generally disagreements between cultural progressives and cultural conservatives. The cultural progressives believe that the structure of one's family and the nature of marriage should be left up to individual decision and they argue that as long as one does no harm to others, no lifestyle is inherently better than any other.
Because cultural liberalism expresses the social dimension of liberalism, it is often referred to as social liberalism, especially in countries such as the United States. However, it is not the same as the broader political ideology known as social liberalism. In the United States, social liberalism describes progressive moral and social values or stances on socio-cultural issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage, as opposed to
Economic liberalism (also known as fiscal conservatism in the United States politics) is a political ideology and economic ideology based on strong support for a market economy and private property in the means of production. Economic liberals tend to oppose government intervention in the market when it inhibits free trade and open competition, but support government intervention to protect property rights and resolve market failures. Economic liberalism has been generally described as representing the economic expression of classical liberalism.
As an economic system, economic liberalism is organized on individual lines, meaning that the greatest possible number of economic decisions are made by individuals or households rather than by collective institutions or organizations. An economy that is managed according to these precepts may be described as liberal capitalism or a liberal economy.
Economic liberalism is associated with markets and private ownership of capital assets. Historically, economic liberalism arose in response to mercantilism and feudalism. Today, economic liberalism is also considered opposed to non-capitalist economic orders such as socialism and planned economies. It also contrasts with protectionism because of its support for free trade and open markets.
Economic liberals commonly adhere to a political and economic philosophy which advocates a restrained fiscal policy and the balancing of budgets, through measures such as low taxes, reduced government spending, and minimized government debt. Free trade, deregulation of the economy, lower taxes, privatization, labour market flexibility, and opposition to trade unions. Economic liberalism follows the same philosophical approach as classical liberalism and fiscal conservatism.
Liberalism in the United States ("modern liberalism") is a political philosophy and moral philosophy based on concepts of unalienable rights of the individual. The fundamental liberal ideals of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, the separation of church and state, the right to due process, and equality under the law are widely accepted as a common foundation of liberalism. It differs from liberalism worldwide because the United States has never had a resident hereditary aristocracy, and avoided much of the class warfare that characterized Europe. According to Ian Adams, "all U.S. parties are liberal and always have been. Essentially they espouse classical liberalism, that is a form of democratized Whig constitutionalism plus the free market. The point of difference comes with the influence of social liberalism" and the proper role of government.
Modern liberalism includes issues such as same-sex marriage, reproductive rights and other women's rights, voting rights for all adult citizens, civil rights, environmental justice, and government protection of the right to an adequate standard of living. National social services such as equal educational opportunities, access to health care and transportation infrastructure are intended to meet the responsibility to promote the general welfare of all citizens as established by the Constitution of the United States. Some liberals - who call themselves classical liberals, fiscal conservatives, or libertarians - endorse fundamental liberal ideals, but they diverge from modern liberal thought, claiming that economic freedom is more important than equality, and that providing for general welfare as enumerated in the Taxing and Spending Clause of the Constitution of the United States exceeds the legitimate role of government.
Since the 1930s, the term liberalism is usually used without a qualifier to refer to social liberalism, a variety of liberalism that endorses a regulated market economy and the expansion of civil and political rights, with the common good considered as compatible with or superior to the freedom of the individual. This political philosophy was exemplified by Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal policies, and later Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society. Other accomplishments include the Works Progress Administration, and the Social Security Act in 1935, as well as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This variety of liberalism is also known in the United States as modern liberalism, to distinguish it from classical liberalism - from which it derived, along with modern conservatism.
Modern liberalism (in the United States often simply referred to as liberalism) is the dominant version of liberalism in the United States. It combines ideas of civil liberty and social equality, with support for social justice and a mixed economy.
Economically, modern liberalism opposes cuts to the social safety net and supports a role for government in reducing inequality, providing education, ensuring access to healthcare, regulating economic activity and protecting the natural environment. This form of liberalism took shape in the 20th century United States as the franchise and other civil rights were extended to a larger class of citizens. Major examples include Theodore Roosevelt's Square Deal and New Nationalism, Woodrow Wilson's New Freedom, Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, Harry S. Truman's Fair Deal, John F. Kennedy's New Frontier, and Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society.
In the first half of the 20th century, both major American parties had a
Neoliberalism (neo-liberalism) is a term used to describe the 20th-century resurgence of 19th-century ideas associated with free-market capitalism. A significant factor in the rise of conservative and libertarian organizations, political parties, and think tanks, and predominately advocated by them, it is generally associated with policies of economic liberalization, including privatization, deregulation, globalization, free trade, austerity, and reductions in government spending in order to increase the role of the private sector in the economy and society; however, the defining features of neoliberalism in both thought and practice have been the subject of substantial scholarly debate. The term has multiple, competing definitions, and a pejorative valence. In policymaking, neoliberalism often refers to what was part of a paradigm shift that followed the failure of the Keynesian consensus in economics to address the stagflation of the 1970s.
English speakers have used the term neoliberalism since the start of the 20th century with different meanings, but it became more prevalent in its current meaning in the 1970s and 1980s, used by scholars in a wide variety of social sciences as well as by critics. The term is rarely used by proponents of free-market policies. Some scholars have described the term as meaning different things to different people as neoliberalism has "mutated" into geopolitically distinct hybrids as it travelled around the world. Neoliberalism shares many attributes with other concepts that have contested meanings, including representative democracy. The definition and usage of the term have changed over time. As an economic philosophy, neoliberalism emerged among European liberal scholars in the 1930s as they attempted to revive and renew central ideas from classical liberalism as they saw these ideas diminish in popularity, overtaken by a desire to control markets, following the Great Depression and manifested in policies designed to counter the volatility of free markets, and mitigate their negative social consequences. One impetus for the formulation of policies to mitigate free-market volatility was a desire to avoid repeating the economic failures of the early 1930s, failures sometimes attributed principally to the economic policy of classical liberalism.
When the term entered into common use in the 1980s in connection with Augusto Pinochet's economic reforms in Chile, it quickly took on negative connotations and was employed principally by critics of market reform and laissez-faire capitalism. Scholars tended to associate it with the theories of Mont Pelerin Society economists Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, and James M. Buchanan, along with politicians and policy-makers such as Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and Alan Greenspan. Once the new meaning of neoliberalism became established as a common usage among Spanish-speaking scholars, it diffused into the English-language study of political economy. By 1994, with the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and with the Zapatistas' reaction to this development in Chiapas, the term neoliberal entered global circulation. Scholarship on the phenomenon of neoliberalism has grown over the last few decades.
Social liberalism, also known as left liberalism in Germany, new liberalism in the United Kingdom, modern liberalism in the United States, and progressive liberalism in Spanish speaking countries is a political philosophy and variety of liberalism that endorses a social market economy within an individualist economy and the expansion of civil and political rights. Under social liberalism, the common good is viewed as harmonious with the freedom of the individual.
Social liberal policies have been widely adopted in much of the world. Social liberal ideas and parties tend to be considered centrist or center-left. A social liberal government is expected to address economic and social issues such as poverty, welfare, infrastructure, health care, education, and the climate using government intervention whilst also emphasizing the rights and autonomy of the individual.
In the United States, the term social liberalism may sometimes refer to progressive stances on sociocultural issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage. as opposed to
Libertarianism (from French: libertaire, "libertarian"; from Latin: libertas, "freedom") is a political philosophy and political movement that upholds liberty as a core principle. Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and political freedom, emphasizing free association, freedom of choice, individualism, and voluntary association. Libertarians share a skepticism of political authority and state power, but some libertarians diverge on the scope of their opposition to existing economic systems and political systems. Various schools of libertarian thought offer a range of views regarding the legitimate functions of state and private power, often calling for the restriction or dissolution of coercive social institutions. Different categorizations have been used to distinguish various forms of libertarianism. Scholars distinguish libertarian views on the nature of property and capital, usually along left-right or socialist-capitalist lines.
Libertarianism originated as a form of left-wing politics such as authoritarianism and anti-state socialists like anarchists, especially social anarchists, but more generally libertarian communists / libertarian Marxists and libertarian socialists. These libertarians seek to abolish capitalism and private ownership of the means of production, or else to restrict their purview or effects to usufruct property norms, in favor of common ownership or cooperative ownership and management, viewing private property as a barrier to freedom and liberty. Left-libertarian ideologies include anarchist schools of thought, alongside many other anti-paternalist and New Left schools of thought centered around economic egalitarianism, as well as geolibertarianism, green politics, market-oriented left-libertarianism, and the Steiner-Vallentyne school.
In the mid-20th century, right-libertarian proponents of anarcho-capitalism and minarchism co-opted the term libertarian to advocate laissez-faire capitalism and strong private property rights such as in land, infrastructure and natural resources. The latter is the dominant form of libertarianism in the United States, where it advocates civil liberties, natural law, free-market capitalism, and a major reversal of the modern welfare state.
Left-libertarianism, also known as egalitarian libertarianism, left-wing libertarianism or social libertarianism, is a political philosophy and type of libertarianism that stresses both individual freedom and social equality. Left-libertarianism represents several related yet distinct approaches to political and social theory. In its classical usage, it refers to anti-authoritarian varieties of left-wing politics such as anarchism, especially social anarchism, whose adherents simply call it libertarianism. In the United States, it represents the left-wing of the libertarian movement and the political positions associated with academic philosophers Hillel Steiner, Philippe Van Parijs, and Peter Vallentyne that combine self-ownership with an egalitarian approach to natural resources. This is done to distinguish libertarian views on the nature of property and capital, usually along left-right or socialist-capitalist lines.
While maintaining full respect for personal property, socialist left-libertarians are opposed to capitalism and the private ownership of the means of production. Left-libertarians are skeptical of, or fully against, private ownership of natural resources, arguing in contrast to right-libertarians that neither claiming nor mixing one's labor with natural resources is enough to generate full private property rights and maintain that natural resources should be held in an egalitarian manner, either unowned, or owned collectively. Those left-libertarians who are more lenient towards private property support different property norms and theories such as usufruct, or under the condition that recompense is offered to the local community or even global community, such as the Steiner-Vallentyne school.
Left-wing market anarchism (or market-oriented left-libertarianism), including Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's mutualism, and Samuel Konkin III's agorism, appeals to left-wing concerns such as class, egalitarianism, environmentalism, gender, immigration, and sexuality within the paradigm of free-market anti-capitalism. Although libertarianism in the United States has become associated to classical liberalism and minarchism, with right-libertarianism being more known than left-libertarianism, political usage of the term until then was associated exclusively with anti-capitalism, libertarian socialism, and social anarchism and in most parts of the world such an association still predominates.
Libertarianism in the United States is a political philosophy and political movement promoting individual liberty. According to common meanings of
Broadly, there are four principal traditions within libertarianism, namely;
the libertarianism that developed in the mid-20th century out of the revival tradition of classical liberalism in the United States after liberalism associated with the New Deal;
the libertarianism developed in the 1950s by anarcho-capitalist author Murray Rothbard, who based it on the anti-New Deal Old Right and 19th-century libertarianism and American individualist anarchists such as Benjamin Tucker and Lysander Spooner, while rejecting the labor theory of value in favor of Austrian School economics and the subjective theory of value;
the libertarianism developed in the 1970s by Robert Nozick and founded in American and European classical liberal traditions; and,
the libertarianism associated to the Libertarian Party which was founded in 1971, including politicians such as David Nolan and Ron Paul.
Compared to left-libertarianism, right-libertarianism - associated with people such as Murray Rothbard and Robert Nozick - is the dominant form of libertarianism in the United States. According to David Lewis Schaefer, Robert Nozick's book Anarchy, State, and Utopia has received significant attention in academia.
Left-libertarianism is associated with the left-wing of the modern libertarian movement and more recently to the political positions associated with academic philosophers Hillel Steiner, Philippe Van Parijs, and Peter Vallentyne - that combine self-ownership with an egalitarian approach to natural resources. Left-libertarianism is also related to anti-capitalist, free-market anarchist strands such as left-wing market anarchism (referred to as market-oriented left-libertarianism, to distinguish itself from other forms of libertarianism).
Libertarianism includes anarchist and libertarian socialist tendencies, although they are not as widespread as in other countries. Murray Bookchin, a libertarian within this socialist tradition, argued that anarchists, libertarian socialists and the left should reclaim libertarian as a term, suggesting these other self-declared libertarians to instead rename themselves propertarians.
Although all libertarians oppose government intervention, there is a division between:
anarchist or socialist libertarians - as well as anarcho-capitalists such as Murray Rothbard and David D. Friedman - who adhere to the anti-state position, viewing the state as an unnecessary evil;
minarchists - such as Robert Nozick - who recognize the necessary need for a minimal state (often referred to as a night-watchman state); and,
classical liberals who support a minimized small government, and a major reversal of the welfare state.
The major libertarian party in the United States is the Libertarian Party, but libertarians are also represented within the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, while others are independent. Through twenty polls on this topic spanning thirteen years, Gallup found that voters who identify as libertarians ranged from 17 to 23% of the American electorate. However, a 2014 Pew Poll found that 23% of Americans who identify as libertarians have little understanding of libertarianism. Yellow, a political color associated with liberalism worldwide, has also been used as a political color for modern libertarianism in the United States. The Gadsden flag, a symbol first used by American revolutionaries, is frequently used by libertarians and the libertarian-leaning Tea Party movement.
Although the term libertarian continues to be widely used to refer to anti-state socialists internationally, its meaning in the United States has deviated from its political origins to the extent that the common meaning of the term libertarian in the United States is different from elsewhere in the world. The Libertarian Party asserts the following core beliefs of libertarianism.
"Libertarians support maximum liberty in both personal and economic matters. They advocate a much smaller government; one that is limited to protecting individuals from coercion and violence. Libertarians tend to embrace individual responsibility, oppose government bureaucracy and taxes, promote private charity, tolerate diverse lifestyles, support the free market, and defend civil liberties".
A night-watchman state or minarchy, whose proponents are known as minarchists, is a model of a state that is limited and minimal, whose functions depends on libertarian theory. right-libertarians support it only as an enforcer of the non-aggression principle by providing citizens with the military, the police, and courts - thereby protecting them from aggression, theft, breach of contract, fraud, and enforcing property laws. Some anarchists and Left-libertarians - who do not accept the non-aggression principle or capitalist property rights - propose it with the functions of a minimal welfare state on the grounds that social safety nets are short-term goals for the working class, and believe in stopping welfare programs only if it means abolishing both government and capitalism. Other left-libertarians prefer repealing corporate welfare, before social welfare for the poor.
In the United States, this form of government is mainly associated with libertarian and Objectivist political philosophy. In other countries, minarchism is also associated to some non-anarchist libertarian socialists and other Left-libertarians. A night-watchman state has been advocated and made popular by Robert Nozick in Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974). 19th-century Britain has been described by historian Charles Townshend as a standard-bearer of this form of government.
The term night-watchman State was coined by Ferdinand Lassalle and derived from the watchman system used by various European cities starting in the Medieval period. The voluntary militia functioned as a city guard for internal policing and against external aggression.
Right-libertarianism, also known as libertarian capitalism or right-wing libertarianism, is a political philosophy and type of libertarianism that supports capitalist property rights and defends market distribution of natural resources and private property. The term right-libertarianism is used to distinguish this class of views on the nature of property and capital from left-libertarianism, a type of libertarianism that combines self-ownership with an egalitarian approach to natural resources. In contrast to socialist libertarianism, right-libertarianism supports free-market capitalism. Like most forms of libertarianism, right-libertarianism supports civil liberties, especially natural law, negative rights, and a major reversal of the modern welfare state.
Right-libertarian political thought is characterized by the strict priority given to liberty, with the need to maximize the realm of individual freedom and minimize the scope of public authority. Right-libertarians typically see the state as the principal threat to liberty. This anti-statism differs from anarchist doctrines, in that it is based upon an uncompromising individualism that places little or no emphasis upon human sociability or cooperation.
Right-libertarian philosophy is also rooted in the ideas of individual rights and laissez-faire economics. The right-libertarian theory of individual rights generally follow the homestead principle and the labor theory of property, stressing self-ownership and that people have an absolute right to the property that their labor produces.
Economically, right-libertarians make no distinction between capitalism and free markets and view any attempt to dictate the market process as counterproductive, emphasizing the mechanisms and self-regulating nature of the market whilst portraying government intervention and attempts to redistribute wealth as invariably unnecessary and counter-productive. Although all right-libertarians oppose government intervention, there is a division between anarcho-capitalists - who view the state as an unnecessary evil and want property rights protected without statutory law through market-generated tort, contract and property law - and minarchists, who support the need for a minimal state, often referred to as a night-watchman state, to provide its citizens with courts, military, and police.
While influenced by classical liberal thought, with some viewing right-libertarianism as an outgrowth or as a variant of it, there are significant differences. Edwin Van de Haar argues that "confusingly, in the United States the term libertarianism is sometimes also used for or by classical liberals. But this erroneously masks the differences between them". Classical liberalism refuses to give priority to liberty over order and therefore does not exhibit the hostility to the state which is the defining feature of libertarianism. As such, right-libertarians believe classical liberals favor too much state involvement, arguing that they do not have enough respect for individual property rights and lack sufficient trust in the workings of the free market and its spontaneous order, leading to support of a much larger state. Right-libertarians also disagree with classical liberals as being too supportive of central banks and monetarist policies.
Like libertarians of all varieties, right-libertarians refer to themselves simply as libertarians. Since the late 20th century Right-libertarianism has become the most common type of libertarianism in the United States, while historically and elsewhere it continues to be widely used to refer to anti-state forms of socialism such as anarchism - and more generally, libertarian communism / libertarian Marxism and libertarian socialism. Around the time of Murray Rothbard - who popularized the term libertarian in the United States during the 1960s - anarcho-capitalist movements started calling themselves
Criticism of right-libertarianism includes ethical, economic, environmental, pragmatic and philosophical concerns, including the view that it has no explicit theory of liberty. It has been argued that Laissez-faire capitalism does not necessarily produce the best or most efficient outcome, nor does its philosophy of individualism and policies of deregulation prevent the abuse of natural resources.
In economics and sociology, the means of production (also called capital goods or productive property) are the physical and non-financial inputs used in the production of goods and services with economic value. These include raw materials, facilities, machinery and tools used in the production of goods and services.
From the perspective of a firm, a firm uses its capital goods, which are also known as tangible assets as they are physical in nature. Unfinished goods are transformed into products and services in the production process. Even if capital goods are not traded on the market as consumer goods, they can be valued as long as capital goods are produced commodities, which are required for production. The total values of capital goods constitute the capital value.
The social means of production are capital goods and assets that require organized collective labor effort, as opposed to individual effort, to operate on. The ownership and organization of the social means of production is a key factor in categorizing and defining different types of economic systems.
The means of production includes two broad categories of objects: instruments of labor (tools, factories, infrastructure, etc.) and subjects of labor (natural resources and raw materials). People operate on the subjects of labor using the instruments of labor to create a product; or stated another way, labor acting on the means of production creates a good. In an agrarian society the principal means of production is the soil and the shovel. In an industrial society the means of production become social means of production and include factories and mines. In a knowledge economy, computers and networks are means of production. In a broad sense, the "means of production" also includes the "means of distribution" such as stores, the internet and railroads (infrastructural capital).
The means of production of the firm may depreciate, which means there is a loss in the economic value of capital goods or tangible assets (e.g machinery, factory equipment) due to wear and tear, and aging. This is known as the depreciation of capital goods.
Neoconservatism [neo-conservatism; "neocon"] is a political movement born in the United States during the 1960s among liberal hawks who became disenchanted with the increasingly pacifist foreign policy of the Democratic Party, and with the growing New Left and counterculture of the 1960s, particularly the Vietnam protests. Some also began to question their liberal beliefs regarding domestic policies such as the Great Society. Neoconservatives typically advocate the promotion of democracy and interventionism in international affairs, including peace through strength, and are known for opposing communism and political radicalism.
Prominent neoconservatives in the George W. Bush administration included Paul Wolfowitz, Elliott Abrams, Richard Perle, and Paul Bremer. While not identifying as neoconservatives, senior officials Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld listened closely to neoconservative advisers regarding foreign policy, especially the defense of Israel and the promotion of American influence in the Middle East. Many of its adherents became politically influential during the Republican Party presidential administrations of the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, peaking in influence during the administration of George W. Bush, when they played a major role in promoting and planning the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Critics of neoconservatism have used the term to describe foreign policy and war hawks who support aggressive militarism or neo-imperialism. Historically speaking, the term neoconservative refers to those who made the ideological journey from the anti-Stalinist left to the camp of American conservatism during the 1960s and 1970s. The neoconservative movement had its intellectual roots in the magazine Commentary, edited by Norman Podhoretz. They spoke out against the New Left, and in that way helped define the neoconservative movement.
[theNation.com, 2021-11-26] Who Is the University of Austin For? The project's uphill battle points to a deeper contradiction within what might be called neo-neoconservatism.
Paleoconservatism is a political philosophy and variety of conservatism in the United States stressing American nationalism, Christian ethics, regionalism, and traditionalist conservatism. Paleoconservatism's concerns overlap with those of the Old Right that opposed the New Deal in the 1930s and 1940s, as well as with paleolibertarianism and right-wing populism.
The terms neoconservative and paleoconservative were coined following the outbreak of the Vietnam War and a divide in American conservatism between the interventionists and the isolationists. Those in favor of the Vietnam War then became known as the neoconservatives (interventionists), as they marked a decisive split from the nationalist-isolationism that the traditionalist conservatives (isolationists) had subscribed to up until this point.
According to the international relations scholar Michael Foley, "paleoconservatives press for restrictions on immigration, a rollback of multicultural programs and large-scale demographic change, the decentralization of federal policy, the restoration of controls upon free trade, a greater emphasis upon
Paleolibertarianism was a strategy of political activism for libertarianism developed by American anarcho-capitalist theorists Murray Rothbard and Lew Rockwell in the American political context after the end of Cold War, from 1989 to 1995, that sought to deliver the libertarianism ideas of opposition to government intervention using messages accessible to working and middle-class people of the time - an approach usually identified as right-wing populism - to radicalize them against the state. The name elected for this kind of activism was in remembrance of the roots of the modern libertarian movement: the American classical liberal movement of the first half of the 20th century that was part of the anti-war and anti-New Deal Old Right (hence the prefix "paleo").
The paleolibertarianism strategy was expected to move libertarianism movement away from the influence of public policy libertarian organizations based in Washington, D.C., who were accused of giving up communicating the complete libertarian message while adopting the political and cultural values of the U.S. capital to gain acceptance among the political elite, and to move American right-wing politics away from the neoconservative movement because of its promotion of a U.S. foreign policy usually identified as American imperialism by libertarian thinkers.
A planned economy is a type of economic system where investment, production, and the allocation of capital goods takes place according to economy-wide economic plans and production plans. A planned economy may use centralized, decentralized, participatory, or Soviet-type forms of economic planning. The level of centralization or decentralization in decision-making and participation depends on the specific type of planning mechanism employed.
Socialist states based on the Soviet model have used central planning, although a minority such as the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia have adopted some degree of market socialism. Market abolitionist socialism replaces factor markets with direct calculation as the means to coordinate the activities of the various socially-owned economic enterprises that make up the economy. More recent approaches to socialist planning and allocation have come from some economists and computer scientists proposing planning mechanisms based on advances in computer science and information technology.
Planned economies contrast with unplanned economies, specifically market economies, where autonomous firms operating in markets make decisions about production, distribution, pricing and investment. Market economies that use indicative planning are variously referred to as planned market economies, mixed economies, and mixed market economies. A command economy follows an administrative-command system and uses Soviet-type economic planning which was characteristic of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc before most of these countries converted to market economies. This highlights the central role of hierarchical administration and public ownership of production in guiding the allocation of resources in these economic systems.
Plutonomy (from Greek "πλοῦτος", "ploutos" "wealth", and "νόμος", "nomos" "law", a portmanteau of "plutocracy" and "economy") is the science of production and distribution of wealth.
Plutonomy entered the language as late as the 1850s in the work of John Malcolm Forbes Ludlow. John Ruskin is quoted as having referred to plutonomy as a "base or bastard science."
Citigroup analysts have also used the word plutonomy to describe economies "where economic growth is powered by and largely consumed by the wealthy few." In three reports for super-rich Citigroup clients published in 2005 and 2006, a team of Citigroup analysts elaborated on their thesis that the share of the very rich in national income of plutonomies had become so large that what is going on in these economies and in their relation with other economies cannot be properly understood any more with reference to the average consumer: "The rich are so rich that their behavior - be it negative savings, or just very low consumption of oil as a % of their income - overwhelms that of the 'average' consumer."
The authors of these studies predicted that the global trend toward plutonomies would continue, for various reasons, including "capitalist-friendly governments and tax regimes". They do, however, also warn of the risk that, since "political enfranchisement remains as was - one person, one vote, at some point it is likely that labor will fight back against the rising profit share of the rich and there will be a political backlash against the rising wealth of the rich."
See also main entry: Citigroup's Shocking 'Plutonomy' Reports.
In a chilling portent of our current wealth imbalance and state of affairs, years ago Citigroup financial analysts identified the overarching dominance and influence of their ultrawealthy clients -- and the risks to these clients (chiefly, political interference from nonwealthy, disenfranchised voters): ostensively to protect them from us (not vice versa).
[2005-10-16] Citigroup Plutonomy Report #1: Equity Strategy. Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances
[2006-03-05] Citigroup Plutonomy Report #2: Equity Strategy. Revisiting Plutonomy: The Rich Getting Richer
[2006-09-29] Citigroup Plutonomy Report #3: Equity Strategy. The Global Investigator The Plutonomy Symposium -- Rising Tides Lifting Yachts
Eight years after Kapur and his team developed and published their plutonomy thesis, the French economist Thomas Piketty achieved worldwide prominence with his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century. In this book, he shows a strong long-term trend toward more concentrated income and wealth. Some economists took issue with this diagnosis. During this discussion, Ajay Kapur the author of the plutonomy-theses, which is closely related to Piketty's theses, entered the public stage again in May 2014. In a paper, which he wrote for customers of his new employer, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, one of the largest wealth management firms, Kapur and his team defended Piketty against critics.
In their study "Piketty and Plutonomy: The Revenge of Inequality" they state that in the long term the drivers of the further concentration of wealth are intact, including globalization and capitalism-friendly governments. However, they warn that in the short-term there is potential for a backlash. One reason is that the U.S. central bank - the Federal Reserve - is reducing their asset purchases. According to Kapur and team, "the balance sheets of the plutonomists have been an important transmission channel of monetary policy."
They further see the luxury industry catering to plutonomists threatened by anti-corruption initiatives of China and India. Firms like Rémy Cointreau are already suffering from this, they write.
The "Global Wealth Report" which Boston Consulting Group published in June 2014 in Washington D.C., shows that the liquid wealth of the super-rich, the ultra-high-net-worth households, has increased by 20% in 2013.
Boston Consulting Group uses a household definition of ultra high-net-worth individuals, which places only those with more than $100 million liquid financial wealth into the ultra high-net-worth individuals category, more than the usual $30 million, with which the ultra-category had been created in 2007. According to Boston Consulting Group, about 15,000 households globally belong in this group of the super-rich. They control 5.5% of the global financial wealth. 5,000 of them live in the U.S., followed by China, Britain, and Germany.
Boston Consulting Group expects the trend toward more concentrated wealth to continue unabated. While the financial wealth of the sub-millionaires is expected to increase by 3.7% annually until 2019, the expected growth rate for the super-rich is 9.1%. The share of this group in global financial wealth would thus increase to 5.5% by 2019.
Source: Wikipedia, 2021-10-08
Populism refers to a range of political stances that emphasize the idea of "the people" and often juxtapose this group against "the elite". The term developed in the 19th century and has been applied to various politicians, parties, and movements since that time, although it has rarely been chosen as a self-description. Within political science and other social sciences, several different definitions of populism have been employed, with some scholars proposing that the term be rejected altogether.
A common framework for interpreting populism is known as the ideational approach: this defines populism as an ideology which presents "the people" as a morally good force and contrasts them against "the elite", who are portrayed as corrupt and self-serving. Populists differ in how "the people" are defined, but it can be based along class, ethnic, or national lines. Populists typically present "the elite" as comprising the political, economic, cultural, and media establishment, depicted as a homogeneous entity and accused of placing their own interests, and often the interests of other groups - such as large corporations, foreign countries, or immigrants - above the interests of "the people". Populist parties and social movements are often led by charismatic or dominant figures who present themselves as the "voice of the people."
According to the ideational approach, populism is often combined with other ideologies, such as nationalism, liberalism, or socialism. Thus, populists can be found at different locations along the left-right political spectrum, and there exist both left-wing populism and right-wing populism.
Other scholars of the social sciences have defined the term populism differently. According to the popular agency definition used by some historians of United States history, populism refers to popular engagement of the population in political decision making. An approach associated with the political scientist Ernesto Laclau presents populism as an emancipatory social force through which marginalised groups challenge dominant power structures. Some economists have used the term in reference to governments which engage in substantial public spending financed by foreign loans, resulting in hyperinflation and emergency measures. In popular discourse - where the term has often been used pejoratively - it has sometimes been used synonymously with demagogy, to describe politicians who present overly simplistic answers to complex questions in a highly emotional manner, or with opportunism, to characterise politicians who seek to please voters without rational consideration as to the best course of action.
The term populism came into use in the late 19th century alongside the promotion of democracy. In the United States, it was closely associated with the People's Party, while in the Russian Empire it was linked to the agrarian socialist Narodnik movement. In the 1960s the term became increasingly popular among social scientists in Western countries, and later in the 20th century it was applied to various political parties active in liberal democracies. In the 21st century, the term became increasingly common in political discourse, particularly in the Americas and Europe, to describe a range of left-wing, right-wing, and centrist groups that challenged the established parties.
Socialism is a political, social, and economic philosophy encompassing a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production and democratic control, such as workers' self-management of enterprises. It includes the political theories and movements associated with such systems. Social ownership can be public, collective, cooperative, or of equity. While no single definition encapsulates the many types of socialism, social ownership is the one common element. Socialisms vary based on the role of markets and planning in resource allocation, on the structure of management in organizations, and from below or from above approaches, with some socialists favouring a party, state, or technocratic-driven approach. Socialists disagree on whether government, particularly existing government, is the correct vehicle for change.
Socialist systems are divided into non-market and market forms. Non-market socialism substitutes factor markets and money with integrated economic planning and engineering or technical criteria based on calculation performed in-kind, thereby producing a different economic mechanism that functions according to different economic laws and dynamics than those of capitalism. A non-market socialist system seeks to eliminate the perceived inefficiencies, irrationalities, and unpredictability, and crises that socialists traditionally associate with capital accumulation and the profit system in capitalism. The socialist calculation debate, originated by the economic calculation problem, concerns the feasibility and methods of resource allocation for a planned socialist system. By contrast, market socialism retains the use of monetary prices, factor markets and in some cases the profit motive, with respect to the operation of socially owned enterprises and the allocation of capital goods between them. Profits generated by these firms would be controlled directly by the workforce of each firm or accrue to society at large in the form of a social dividend. anarchism and libertarian socialism oppose the use of the state as a means to establish socialism, favouring decentralisation above all, whether to establish non-market socialism or market socialism.
Socialist politics has been both internationalist and nationalist in orientation; organised through political parties and opposed to party politics; at times overlapping with trade unions and at other times independent and critical of them; and present in both industrialised and developing nations. Social democracy originated within the socialist movement, supporting economic interventions and social interventions to promote social justice. While retaining socialism as a long-term goal, since the post-war period it has come to embrace a Keynesian mixed economy within a predominantly developed capitalist market economy and liberal democratic polity that expands state intervention to include income redistribution, regulation, and a welfare state. Economic democracy proposes a sort of market socialism, with more democratic control of companies, currencies, investments and natural resources.
The socialist political movement includes a set of political philosophies that originated in the revolutionary movements of the mid-to-late 18th century and out of concern for the social problems that were associated with capitalism. By the late 19th century, after the work of Karl Marx and his collaborator Friedrich Engels, socialism had come to signify opposition to capitalism and advocacy for a post-capitalist system based on some form of social ownership of the means of production. By the 1920s, communism and social democracy had become the two dominant political tendencies within the international socialist movement, with socialism itself becoming the most influential secular movement of the 20th century. Socialist parties and ideas remain a political force with varying degrees of power and influence on all continents, heading national governments in many countries around the world. Today, many socialists have also adopted the causes of other social movements such as environmentalism, feminism, and progressivism.
While the emergence of the Soviet Union as the world's first nominally socialist state led to socialism's widespread association with the Soviet economic model. Some economists like Richard D. Wolff, and intellectuals like Noam Chomsky posit that in practice the model functioned as a form of state capitalism or a non-planned administrative or command economy. Several academics, political commentators, and scholars have distinguished between authoritarian socialist and democratic socialist states, with the first representing the Soviet Bloc and the latter representing Western Bloc countries which have been democratically governed by socialist parties such as Britain, France, Sweden, and Western social-democracies in general, among others.
The social market economy (SOME; German: soziale Marktwirtschaft), also called Rhine capitalism and social capitalism, is a socioeconomic model combining a regulated free market capitalist economic system alongside social policies that establish both fair competition within the market and generally a welfare state. It is sometimes classified as a coordinated market economy. The social market economy was originally promoted and implemented in West Germany by the Christian Democratic Union under Chancellor Konrad Adenauer in 1949, and today it is used by Christian Democrats and Social Democrats alike. Its origins can be traced to the interwar Freiburg school of economic thought.
The social market economy was designed to be a third way between Laissez-faire economic liberalism and socialist economics. It was strongly inspired by distributism and ordoliberalism, which was influenced by the political ideology of Christian democracy. The social market economy is used by ordoliberals, social liberals and modern (not Marxist) Social Democrats. Social market refrains from attempts to plan and guide production, the workforce, or sales, but it does support planned efforts to influence the economy through the organic means of a comprehensive economic policy coupled with flexible adaptation to market studies. Combining monetary, credit, trade, tax, customs, investment and social policies as well as other measures, this type of economic policy aims to create an economy that serves the welfare and needs of the entire population, thereby fulfilling its ultimate goal.
The "social" segment is often wrongly confused with socialism and democratic socialism. Although aspects were inspired by democratic socialism, the social market approach rejects the socialist ideas of replacing private property and markets with social ownership and economic planning. The "social" element of the model instead refers to support for the provision of equal opportunity and protection of those unable to enter the free market labor force because of old-age, disability, or unemployment.
Some authors use the term social capitalism with roughly the same meaning as social market economy. It is also called "Rhine capitalism", typically when contrasting it with the Anglo-Saxon model of capitalism. Rather than see it as an antithesis, some authors describe Rhine capitalism as a successful synthesis of the Anglo-American model with social democracy. The German model is also contrasted and compared with other economic models, some of which are also described as "third ways" or regional forms of capitalism, including Tony Blair's Third Way, French dirigisme, the Dutch polder model, the Nordic model, Japanese corporate capitalism, and the contemporary Chinese model. A 2012 comparative politics textbook distinguishes between the "conservative-corporatist welfare state" (arising from the German social market economy) and the "labor-led social democratic welfare state". The concept of the model has since been expanded upon into the idea of an eco-social market economy as not only taking into account the social responsibility of humanity, but also the sustainable use and protection of natural resources.
Countries with a social market economy include Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Poland and the United Kingdom.
A social movement is a loosely organized effort by a large group of people to achieve a particular goal, typically a social issue, or a political issue. This may be to carry out, resist or undo a social change. It is a type of group action and may involve individuals, organizations or both. Definitions of the term are slightly varied. Social movements have been described as "organizational structures and strategies that may empower oppressed populations to mount effective challenges and resist the more powerful and advantaged elites". They represent a method of social change from the bottom within nations.
Political science and sociology have developed a variety of theories and empirical research on social movements. For example, some research in political science highlights the relation between popular movements and the formation of new political parties as well as discussing the function of social movements in relation to agenda setting and influence on politics. Sociologists distinguish between several types of social movement examining things such as scope, type of change, method of work, range, and time frame.
Some scholars have argued that modern Western social movements became possible through education (the wider dissemination of literature) and increased mobility of labor due to the industrialization and urbanization of 19th-century societies. It is sometimes argued that the freedom of expression, education and relative economic independence prevalent in the modern Western culture are responsible for the unprecedented number and scope of various contemporary social movements. Many of the social movements of the last hundred years grew up, like the Mau Mau in Kenya, to oppose Western colonialism. Social movements have been and continue to be closely connected with democratic political systems. Occasionally, social movements have been involved in democratizing nations, but more often they have flourished after democratization. Over the past 200 years, they have become part of a popular and global expression of dissent.
Modern movements often utilize technology and the internet to mobilize people globally. Adapting to communication trends is a common theme among successful movements. Research is beginning to explore how advocacy organizations linked to social movements in the U.S. and Canada use social media to facilitate civic engagement and collective action.
A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for analyzing the structure of whole social entities as well as a variety of theories explaining the patterns observed in these structures. The study of these structures uses social network analysis to identify local and global patterns, locate influential entities, and examine network dynamics.
Social networks and the analysis of them is an inherently interdisciplinary academic field which emerged from social psychology, sociology, statistics, and graph theory. Georg Simmel authored early structural theories in sociology emphasizing the dynamics of triads and "web of group affiliations". Jacob Moreno is credited with developing the first sociograms in the 1930s to study interpersonal relationships. These approaches were mathematically formalized in the 1950s and theories and methods of social networks became pervasive in the social and behavioral sciences by the 1980s. Social network analysis is now one of the major paradigms in contemporary sociology, and is also employed in a number of other social and formal sciences. Together with other complex networks, it forms part of the nascent field of network science.
See also: Hansen J. et al. (2021) Opinion Dynamics on Discourse Sheaves.
A two-party system is a political party system in which two major political parties consistently dominate the political landscape. At any point in time, one of the two parties typically holds a majority in the legislature and is usually referred to as the majority or governing party, while the other is the minority or opposition party. Around the world, the term has different meanings. For example, in the United States, the Bahamas, Jamaica, Malta, and Zimbabwe, the sense of two-party system describes an arrangement in which all or nearly all elected officials belong to either of the two major parties, and third parties rarely win any seats in the legislature. In such arrangements, two-party systems are thought to result from several factors, like "winner takes all" or "first past the post" election systems. In such systems, while chances for third-party candidates winning election to major national office are remote, it is possible for groups within the larger parties, or in opposition to one or both of them, to exert influence on the two major parties. In contrast, in Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia and in other parliamentary systems and elsewhere, the term two-party system is sometimes used to indicate an arrangement in which two major parties dominate elections but in which there are viable third parties that do win some seats in the legislature, and in which the two major parties exert proportionately greater influence than their percentage of votes would suggest.
Explanations for why a political system with free elections may evolve into a two-party system have been debated. A leading theory, referred to as Duverger's law, states that two parties are a natural result of a winner-take-all voting system.
See also: Tiwari M. et al. (2021) Modeling the Nonlinear Effects of Opinion Kinematics in Elections: A Simple Ising Model with Random Field Based Study.
The welfare state is a form of government in which the state protects and promotes the economic and social well-being of its citizens, based upon the principles of equal opportunity, equitable distribution of wealth, and public responsibility for citizens unable to avail themselves of the minimal provisions for a good life. Sociologist T.H. Marshall described the modern welfare state as a distinctive combination of democracy, welfare, and capitalism.
As a type of mixed economy, the welfare state funds the governmental institutions for health care and education along with direct benefits given to individual citizens. Early features of the welfare state, such as public pensions and social insurance, developed from the 1880s onwards in industrializing Western countries.
World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II have been characterized as important events that ushered in expansions of the welfare state, including the use of state interventionism to combat lost output, high unemployment, and other problems. By the late 1970s, the contemporary capitalist welfare state began to decline, in part due to the economic crisis of post-World War II capitalism and in part due to the lack of a well-articulated ideological foundation for the welfare state.
Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a group of people), especially with the aim of gaining and maintaining the nation's sovereignty (self-governance) over its homeland. Nationalism holds that each nation should govern itself, free from outside interference (self-determination), that a nation is a natural and ideal basis for a polity and that the nation is the only rightful source of political power (popular sovereignty).
Nationalism further aims to build and maintain a single national identity, based on shared social characteristics of culture, ethnicity, geographic location, language, politics (or the government), religion, traditions and belief in a shared singular history, and to promote national unity or solidarity. Political scientists describe such nations as "imagined communities" and nationalism as an "invented tradition" in which shared sentiment provides a form of collective identity and binds individuals together in political solidarity. A nation's foundational "story" may be built around a combination of ethnic attributes, values and principles, and may be closely connected to narratives of belonging. Nationalism can preserve and foster a nation's traditional cultures, and cultural revivals have been associated with nationalist movements. It also encourages pride in national achievements. The moral value of nationalism, the relationship between nationalism and patriotism, and the compatibility of nationalism and cosmopolitanism are all subjects of philosophical debate. Nationalism can be combined with diverse political goals and ideologies such as
Throughout history, people have had an attachment to their kin group and traditions, territorial authorities and their homeland, but nationalism did not become a widely recognized concept until the end of the 18th century. There are three paradigms for understanding the origins and basis of nationalism.
Primordialism (perennialism) proposes that there have always been nations and that nationalism is a natural phenomenon.
Ethnosymbolism explains nationalism as a dynamic, evolutionary phenomenon and stresses the importance of symbols, myths and traditions in the development of nations and nationalism.
Modernization theory proposes that nationalism is a more recent social phenomenon that has developed due to socio-economic structures of modern society including industrialization, urbanization, and mass education.
There are various definitions of a "nation" which leads to different types of nationalism. ethnic nationalism defines the nation in terms of shared ethnicity, heritage and culture while civic nationalism defines the nation in terms of shared citizenship, values and institutions, and is linked to constitutional patriotism. The adoption of national identity in terms of historical development has often been a response by influential groups unsatisfied with traditional identities due to mismatch between their defined social order and the experience of that social order by its members, resulting in an anomie that nationalists seek to resolve. This anomie results in a society reinterpreting identity, retaining elements deemed acceptable and removing elements deemed unacceptable, to create a unified community. This development may be the result of internal structural issues or the result of resentment by an existing group or groups towards other communities, especially foreign powers that are (or are deemed to be) controlling them. National symbols and flags, national anthems, national languages, national myths and other symbols of national identity are highly important in nationalism.
In practice, nationalism can be positive or negative, depending on its ideology and outcomes. Nationalism has been a feature of movements for freedom and justice, and inspired sacrifices for the public good. It has also been used to legitimize racial, ethnic, and religious divisions; suppress or attack minorities; and undermine human rights and democratic traditions. Nationalism has been an important driver in independence movements such as the Greek Revolution, the Irish Revolution, the Zionist movement that created modern Israel, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Radical nationalism combined with racial hatred was also a key factor in the Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany. Nationalism was an important driver of the controversial annexation of Crimea by Russia.
The alt-right - an abbreviation of alternative right - is a loosely connected far-right, white nationalist movement. A largely online phenomenon, the alt-right originated in the United States during the early 2010s before establishing a presence in other countries and declining after 2017. The term is ill-defined, having been used in different ways by alt-right members, media commentators, and academics.
The alt-right is a biologically racist movement promoting a form of identity politics for European Americans and white people internationally. Anti-egalitarian, alt-right rejects the liberal democratic basis of U.S. governance and opposes both the conservative and liberal wings of the country's political mainstream. Many of its members seek to replace the U.S. with a white separatist ethno-state. Some alt-rightists seek to make white nationalism socially respectable while others, known as the "1488" scene, adopt openly white supremacist and Neo-Nazi stances to shock and provoke. Some alt-rightists are antisemitic, promoting a conspiracy theory that there is a Jewish plot to bring about white genocide, although other alt-rightists view most Jews as members of the white race. Anti-feminist, the alt-right intersects with the men's rights movement and online manosphere. The alt-right distinguished itself from earlier forms of white nationalism through its largely online presence and its heavy use of irony and humor, particularly through the promotion of Internet memes like Pepe the Frog. Individuals aligned with many of the alt-right's ideas but not its white nationalism have been termed "alt-lite."
The alt-right's membership is overwhelmingly white and male, attracted to the movement by deteriorating living standards and prospects, anxieties about the social role of white masculinity, and anger at leftist and non-white forms of identity politics such as Black Lives Matter. Alt-right material has contributed to the radicalization of men responsible for various murders and right-wing terrorist attacks in the U.S. since 2014. Critics charge that the term "alt-right" is merely a rebranding of white supremacism.
Source (Wikipedia, 2022-01-20):
See also:
Christian nationalists draw support from the broader
Christian nationalists have often cooperated across
Civic nationalism, also known as liberal nationalism, is a form of nationalism identified by political philosophers who believe in an inclusive form of nationalism that adheres to traditional liberal values of freedom, tolerance, equality, and individual rights.
Civic nationalists often defend the value of national identity by saying that individuals need a national identity in order to lead meaningful, autonomous lives and that democratic polities need national identity in order to function properly. Civic nationalism is frequently contrasted with ethnic nationalism.
Civic nationhood is a political identity built around shared citizenship within the state. Thus, a "civic nation" is defined not by language or culture but by political institutions and liberal principles, which its citizens pledge to uphold. Membership in the civic nation is open to every citizen, regardless of culture or ethnicity, who shares those values. In short, for an example, if you are a citizen of the United States, you are considered as an American.
In theory, a civic nation or state does not aim to promote one culture over another. German philosopher Jürgen Habermas argued that immigrants to a liberal-democratic state need not assimilate into the host culture but only accept the principles of the country's constitution (constitutional patriotism).
Ethnic nationalism, also known as ethnonationalism, is a form of nationalism wherein the nation and nationality are defined in terms of ethnicity, with emphasis on an ethnocentric approach to various political issues related to national affirmation of a particular ethnic group.
The central theme of ethnic nationalists is that "nations are defined by a shared heritage, which usually includes a common language, a common faith, and a common ethnic ancestry". Those of other ethnicities may be classified as second-class citizens.
The theorist Anthony D. Smith uses the term "ethnic nationalism" for non-Western concepts of nationalism as opposed to Western views of a nation defined by its geographical territory. Diaspora studies scholars extend this non-geographically bound concept of "nation" among diasporic communities, at times using the term ethnonation or ethnonationalism to describe a conceptual collective of dispersed ethnics.
Left-wing nationalism or leftist nationalism, also known as social nationalism, is a form of nationalism based upon national self-determination, popular sovereignty, and social equality. Left-wing nationalism can also include anti-imperialism and national liberation movements.
Left-wing nationalism stands in contrast to right-wing politics and right-wing nationalism [right-wing populism], often rejecting ethno-nationalism to this same end, although some forms of left-wing nationalism have in practice included a platform of racialism, favoring a homogeneous society, a rejection of minorities and opposition to immigration.
Neo-Nazism refers to the post-World War II militant, social, and political movements seeking to revive and reinstate Nazi ideology. Neo-Nazis seek to employ their ideology to promote hatred and white supremacy, attack racial and ethnic minorities (which include antisemitism and Islamophobia), and in some cases to create a fascist state.
Neo-Nazism is a global phenomenon, with organized representation in many countries and international networks. It borrows elements from Nazi doctrine, including antisemitism, ultranationalism, racism, xenophobia, ableism, homophobia, anti-Romanyism, anti-communism, and creating a "Fourth Reich." Holocaust denial is common in neo-Nazi circles.
Neo-Nazis regularly display Nazi symbols and express admiration for Adolf Hitler and other Nazi leaders. In some European and Latin American countries, laws prohibit the expression of pro-Nazi, racist, anti-semitic, or homophobic views. Many Nazi-related symbols are banned in European countries (especially Germany) in an effort to curtail neo-Nazism.
White nationalism is a type of nationalism or pan-nationalism which espouses the belief that white people are a race, and seeks to develop and maintain a white racial and national identity. Many of its proponents identify with and are attached to the concept of a white nation, or a "white ethnostate".
Analysts describe white nationalism as overlapping with white supremacism and white separatism. White nationalism is sometimes described as a euphemism for, or subset of, white supremacism and the two have been used interchangeably by journalists and analysts. White separatism is the pursuit of a "white-only state" while supremacism is the belief that white people are superior to nonwhites and should dominate them, taking ideas from social Darwinism and Nazism. White nationalists generally avoid the term "supremacy" because it has negative connotations.
White nationalists say they seek to ensure the survival of the white race, and the cultures of historically white states. They hold that white people should maintain their majority in majority-white countries, maintain their political and economic dominance, and that their cultures should be foremost. Many white nationalists believe that miscegenation, multiculturalism, immigration of nonwhites, and low birth rates among whites are threatening the white race, and some believe these things are being promoted as part of an attempted white genocide. Critics argue that the term "white nationalism" is simply a "rebranding" and ideas such as white pride exist solely to provide a sanitized public face for white supremacy, and that most white nationalist groups promote racial violence.
White pride is an expression primarily used by white separatist, white nationalist, fascists, neo-Nazism and white supremacist organizations in order to signal racist or racialist viewpoints. White pride is also a slogan used by the prominent post-Ku Klux Klan group Stormfront, and a term used to make racist/racialist viewpoints more palatable to the general public who may associate historical abuses with the terms white nationalist, neo-Nazi, and white supremacist.
White separatism is a political movement and a social movement that seeks the separation of white people from people of other races and ethnicities. This may include the establishment of a white ethnostate by removing non-whites from existing communities or by forming new communities elsewhere.
Most modern researchers do not view white separatism as distinct from white supremacist beliefs. The Anti-Defamation League defines white separatism as "a form of white supremacy; the Southern Poverty Law Center defines both white nationalism and white separatism as "ideologies based on white supremacy." Facebook has banned content that is openly white nationalist or white separatist because "white nationalism and white separatism cannot be meaningfully separated from white supremacy and organized hate groups".
Use of the term white separatistto self-identify has been criticized as a dishonest rhetorical ploy. The Anti-Defamation League argues that white supremacists use the phrase white separatist because they believe it has fewer negative connotations than the term white supremacist.
Dobratz & Shanks-Meile reported that adherents usually reject marriage "outside the white race". They argued for the existence of "a distinction between the white supremacist's desire to dominate (as in apartheid, slavery, or segregation) and complete separation by race". They argued that this is a matter of pragmatism, that while many white supremacists are also white separatists, contemporary white separatists reject the view that returning to a system of segregation is possible or desirable in the United States.
White supremacy or white supremacism is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races, and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of white power and white privilege. White supremacy has roots in the now-discredited doctrine of scientific racism, and was a key justification for colonialism. It underlies a spectrum of contemporary movements including neo-Confederates, neo-Nazism, and the so-called Christian Identity movement.
Different forms of white supremacy put forth different conceptions of who is considered white (though the exemplar is generally light-skinned, blond-haired, and blue-eyed, or "Aryan" traits most common in northern Europe), and groups of white supremacists identify various racial, ethnic and religious enemies, most commonly those of Sub-Saharan African ancestry, Indigenous peoples of the Americas and Oceania, Asians, multiracial people, Middle Eastern people, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs.
As a political ideology, white supremacy imposes and maintains social, political, historical, or institutional domination by white people. This ideology has been put into effect through socioeconomic and legal structures such as the Atlantic slave trade, Jim Crow laws in the United States, the White Australia policies from the 1890s to the mid-1970s, and apartheid in South Africa. In addition, this ideology is embodied in the "White power" social movement. Since the early 1980s, the White power movement has been committed to overthrowing the United States government and establishing a white ethnostate using paramilitary tactics.
In academic usage, particularly in critical race theory or intersectionality, "white supremacy" can also refer to a social system in which white people enjoy structural advantages (privilege) over other ethnic groups, on both a collective and individual level, despite formal legal equality.
[📌 pinned article] Gilens, M. & Page, B.I. (2014) Testing theories of American politics: Elites, interest groups, and average citizens. Perspectives on Politics, 12(3): 564-581. | local copy
Each of four theoretical traditions in the study of American politics - which can be characterized as theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy, Economic-Elite Domination, and two types of interest-group pluralism, Majoritarian Pluralism and Biased Pluralism - offers different predictions about which sets of actors have how much influence over public policy: average citizens; economic elites; and organized interest groups, mass-based or business-oriented.
A great deal of empirical research speaks to the policy influence of one or another set of actors, but until recently it has not been possible to test these contrasting theoretical predictions against each other within a single statistical model. We report on an effort to do so, using a unique data set that includes measures of the key variables for 1,779 policy issues.
Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism.
Who governs? Who really rules? To what extent is the broad body of U.S. citizens sovereign, semi-sovereign, or largely powerless? These questions have animated much important work in the study of American politics.
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Despite the seemingly strong empirical support in previous studies for theories of majoritarian democracy, our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts. Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association, and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America's claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.
[theNation.com, 2022-02-28] What Is Fueling Our Century's Global "Disorder"? A conversation with historian Helen Thompson--> about the changes in energy consumption and monetary policy that set the table for today's geopolitical instability.
Much has been written about the
If we want a comprehensive explanation for the last decade's disruptions,
This
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[LabourHub.org.uk, 2022-01-08] Is centrism finished? Mike Phipps leafs through the latest issue of
Mearsheimer,John J. (2019) "Bound to Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Liberal International Order." International Security 43(4): 7-50. | local copy | Discussion: Hacker News: 2022-01-07
The liberal international order [a set of global, rule-based, structured relationships based on political liberalism, economic liberalism and liberal internationalism], erected after the Cold War, was crumbling by 2019. It was flawed from the start and thus destined to fail. The spread of liberal democracy around the globe - essential for building that order - faced strong resistance because of nationalism, which emphasizes self-determination. Some targeted states also resisted U.S. efforts to promote liberal democracy for security-related reasons. Additionally, problems arose because a
[JacobinMag.com, 2021-12-28] Meet the Communist Running Austria's Second Largest City: An interview with Elke Kahr. This fall, the Communist Party won the local elections in
Related:
Party of the European Left (PEL; commonly abbreviated European Left, is a European political party that operates as an association of democratic socialist and communist political parties in the European Union and other European countries. It was formed in January 2004 for the purposes of running in the 2004 European Parliament elections).
Communist Party of Austria (German: Kommunistische Partei Österreichs, KPÖ)
The Left (Germany; Die Linke; stylised as DIE LINKE)
"The darker the night, the brighter the stars." For generations, socialists have used this quotation from Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment to poetically frame small successes in otherwise dark times. These words took on newfound relevance for the
This success, with 29 percent of the vote going to the the
Jacobin Magazine's Loren Balhorn spoke to Elke Kahr about how her party won the trust of tens of thousands of voters - and what a Communist mayor can achieve under capitalism.
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[CommonDreams.org, 2021-12-21] GOP 'Tidal Wave' of Voter Suppression Set to Intensify in 2022, Analysis Warns. "There are solutions to this alarming and unprecedented attack on our democracy," said the Brennan Center for Justice, calling on the United States Senate to pass
[JacobinMag.com, 2021-12-15] Trump Supporters on the Right Are Preparing for a Post-Democratic Future. The Right has always used a mix of legislation, violence, and the courts to keep the wrong people from voting. Now it seems prepared to go a step further: legislating and organizing on the assumption that elections the GOP loses are inherently illegitimate.
The
In the twentieth century, numerous popular struggles faced years of resistance to expand
Republicans are very unlikely to do anything as ham-fisted as
Both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party have tried to
While Republicans have not given up on trying to win elections, they have decided that they aren't going to let anything as trifling as losing keep them out of power. The new energy is motivated in large part by
Of all the
Voter suppression has been a key tactic of the
With the Supreme Court shifted even further to the
Among other things, the failure to pass
In Georgia, Republicans passed a new
In Ohio, Republicans passed a new congressional map on 2021-11-18 giving their party at least 80 percent of seats in a state Donald Trump won with 53 percent of the vote.
In North Carolina, Republicans passed a new congressional map on 2021-11-04 giving their party between 71 to 78 percent of seats in a state Trump won with 49.9 percent of the vote.
In Texas, Republicans passed a new congressional map on 2021-10-18 giving their party 65 percent of seats in a state Trump won with 52 percent of the vote.
The gerrymandering of state legislative districts has been even more extreme than of
In case rigging the districts in their favor fails, Republicans,
Following recent legislation, the Republican government in Georgia flagrantly removed Black Democrats from electoral boards and placed them with white Republicans who parrot Donald Trump's lies about voter fraud costing him the election, a move the usually dry Reuters wire service described as a "purge."
Even longtime Republicans aren't safe unless they toe the new
Beyond putting
As the New York Times reported in June 2021, "Republicans have introduced at least 216 bills in 41 states to give legislatures more power over elections officials, according to the States United Democracy Center, a new
Given that voter suppression and gerrymandering are already very effective in producing the desired outcomes, it remains to be seen how often these
With the Supreme Court of the United States and the
Tactics like storming the Capitol and trying to physically stop the vote count in Democratic strongholds might look silly considered in isolation (though
And as Barton Gellman has extensively reported, the Republicans have learned quickly from
With Republicans set to win more legislative power in 2022 and officials still near-unanimous in their desire to nominate Donald Trump for a rematch against Joe Biden, all of this adds up to an acute crisis of democracy coming in 2024, if not sooner. The question is, who is left to stop it?
[PNAS.org, 2021-12-14] Preventing extreme polarization of political attitudes. | Discussion: Hacker News: 2021-12-14 (main article does not mention identity politics - which is correctly recognized and discussed in the accompanying Hacker News discussion (op. cit.).
Democracies require
The paper addresses two questions:
Is there a level of ideological polarization above which polarization feeds upon itself to become a
If so, what
To explore these questions, we present an
[Vox.com, 2021-12-09] American democracy is tottering. It's not clear Americans care.. Biden's Summit for Democracy is supposed to highlight democracy's global plight. But in America, not many people are paying attention.
During the opening speech at Thursday [2021-12-09]'s Summit for Democracy, President Joe Biden told the assembled
No one other than United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in the room to hear Biden's call to action. The Summit for Democracy is a fully
There is no doubt that democracy in the United States is at serious risk. 2021 began with an attack on the Capitol [2021-01-06 2021 United States Capitol attack] designed to thwart the
Several pieces of legislation on voting rights have been stopped cold by the filibuster, as neither Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) nor Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) seems willing to make an exception to the archaic Senate rule in order to protect democracy. Meanwhile, the voters who care are mostly Republican partisans, believers in Trump's lies about 2020. An October 2021 poll found that 71 percent of Republicans believe democracy is facing a "major threat," as compared to just 35 percent of Democrats.
Experts on democracy warn that America is sleepwalking toward a disaster, a situation where the
In theory, the Summit for Democracy is supposed to be the crown jewel of Joe Biden's
Across the world, there are many cases of democratic "backsliding" - where a
When you read about these near misses, two factors prove decisive again and again: when a
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[theNation.com, 2021-11-26] Who Is the University of Austin For? The project's uphill battle points to a deeper contradiction within what might be called neo-neoconservatism.
[CTVNews.ca, 2021-11-13] CSIS says it's increasingly worried about violent online rhetoric.
Canada's spy service said on Friday [2021-11-12] it was increasingly concerned about the rise of violent ideologically motivated online rhetoric, which it blamed in part on tensions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) said since the start of the pandemic, threats posed by extremists had "evolved with unprecedented multiplicity and fluidity." COVID-19, it said, had worsened existing strains of xenophobia and anti-authoritarianism. Violent extremists were exploiting the pandemic by amplifying false information about government measures and the virus, it said.
Protesters opposed to mandatory vaccinations have blocked access to hospitals across Canada and abused medical staff, both in person and online. "Online rhetoric that is increasingly violent and calls for the arrest and execution of specific individuals is of increasing concern," CSIS said in a statement.
CSIS said that since 2014, people motivated in whole or in part by extremist ideological views had killed 25 people and wounded 41 in Canada. This was more than those motivated by religious or political extremism.
In June 2021, four members of a Muslim family in London, Ont. were run over and killed by a man in a pick-up truck in an attack the police said was driven by hate.
[Georgia Straight: Straight.com, 2021-11-12] B.C. Libertarian leader asks employers to grant party members "accommodation on vaccine mandate".
The British Columbia (B.C.) provincial government now requires mandatory COVID-19 vaccination for health and public sectors workers under the pain of losing their jobs. One political party has taken a strong position against these vaccine mandates, and is actively defending its members. The leader of the British Columbia Libertarian Party [ideology; classical liberalism] has been signing letters supporting requests by party members for "accommodation on the grounds of political belief with regard to the vaccine mandate".
Party leader Keith MacIntyre provided the Straight a template of the letter, which states four libertarian principles related to mandatory vaccination. The first principle states that "no individual or group is permitted to initiate the use of force or fraud against any other". "This is the non-aggression principle, which all libertarians (regardless of party affiliation) share belief in," MacIntyre explains in the letter. He continues, "Without the consent of both parties, any act of physical force by one party against another is considered aggression. This applies to murder just as it does to an unwelcome slap on the back." Hence, "The act of piercing a person's skin with a needle is also an act of force, or aggression, if consent has not been provided."
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[JacobinMag.com, 2021-11-03] Unchecked Corporate Power Is at the Root of America's Democracy Crisis. America's real democracy crisis is this: corporations use a system of legalized bribery to buy public policy, which prevents popular progressive policies from passing and erodes Americans' faith in their government.
In 2014, Northwestern and Princeton researchers published a report statistically documenting how lawmakers do not listen or care about what most voters want, and instead mostly care about serving their big donors. Coupled with additional research [local copy] documenting the discrepancy between donor and voter preferences, they bluntly concluded that the "preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically nonsignificant impact upon public policy."
Seven years later, America is witnessing a very public and explicit illustration of this situation in real time - and Tuesday [2021-11-02]'s off-year election results are the latest confirmation that the country seems pretty ticked off about the situation ahead of the 2022 midterms [United States midterm elections | 2022 United States gubernatorial elections].
In America's nationalized politics, those off-year elections were dominated by headlines from Washington, where President Joe Biden and Democratic lawmakers have spent months agreeing to whittle down their social spending reconciliation bill at the demand of corporate donors and their congressional puppets.
The cuts almost perfectly spotlight the democracy crisis. Indeed, the specific initiatives being slashed or watered down in the Biden agenda bill share two traits: (1) they would require the wealthy and powerful to sacrifice a bit of their wealth and power, and (2) they are quite literally the most popular proposals among rank-and-file voters.
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Mukesh Tiwari et al. (2021) "Modeling the Nonlinear Effects of Opinion Kinematics in Elections: A Simple Ising Model with Random Field Based Study." Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications. DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2021.126287.
Sociophysics model with random field for partisan competition.
Mixed model with contrarian, conformist and inflexible agents.
Efficiency of campaigns and strategies for different levels of dominance.
Inspired by partisan competitions and contentious elections in democratic countries, we numerically explore the effect of campaign strategies and related factors on the opinion of an electorate. The nature of the electorate is modeled through agents with different behaviors, such as, being conformist, contrarian, or inflexible.
The agents are assumed to take discrete opinion values that depend on both internal and external influences. The inhomogeneity of external influence on individuals is modeled as a random field.
Two types of electorates have been considered. In an electorate with only conformist agents short-duration high impact campaigns are highly effective. These are, however, also sensitive to perturbations at the local level modeled as inflexibles and/or absentees. In electorates with both conformist and contrarian agents and varying level of dominance due to local factors, short-term campaigns are effective only in the case of fragile dominance of a single party. Strong local dominance is relatively difficult to influence and long term campaigns with strategies aimed to impact local level politics are seen to be more effective.
[Phys.org, 2021-10-08] Physics meets democracy in this modeling study. A study in the journal Physica A leverages concepts from physics to model how campaign strategies influence the opinions of an electorate in a two-party system.
Jakob Hansen et al. (2021) "Opinion Dynamics on Discourse Sheaves." SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics. DOI: 10.1137/20M1341088.
| discourse | sheaf (mathematics) | topology (mathematics)[Phys.org, 2021-10-06] New mathematical tools to study opinion dynamics. Research published in the SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics describes a new mathematical model for studying influence across social networks. Using tools from the field of topology, Robert Ghrist and Ph.D. graduate Jakob Hansen developed a framework to track how opinions change over time in a wide range of scenarios, including ones where individuals can use deceptive behaviors, and
[JacobinMag.com, 2021-10-10] Die Linke's Defeat Is a Dire Warning for the Left. In September's German election, the socialist Die Linke ["The Left"] party slumped to under 5 percent support. If the Left is to recover, it needs to show that it's still on the side of disenfranchised working-class voters. | "The German federal election, in which the socialist party Die Linke won only 4.9 percent of the vote, was an unmitigated disaster for the Left." | "Even on an issue like Afghanistan, where Die Linke has held a principled position for two decades, internal divisions ended up creating an own goal at a crucial moment." | "The dominant explanation for the defeat, within party ranks, is that voters turned their backs on Die Linke because of its constant infighting and inability to speak with a unified voice." | "Die Linke spent a decade positioning itself as the social conscience of German politics, and in doing so patched together a fragile, cross-class coalition of voters." | "As it lost ground among its traditional Eastern base, Die Linke compensated by picking up younger voters in big cities and university towns" | "Rather than demonstrating the imminent potential for a radical mass movement, the Berlin housing referendum showed what small groups of dedicated, well-organized activists can accomplish."
There's no sense putting lipstick on a pig: the German federal election, in which the socialist party Die Linke won only 4.9 percent of the vote, was an unmitigated disaster for the Left. In the September 26 vote, the party's support was nearly halved, compared to the last such contest in 2017. Even worse, it registered its biggest losses in its traditional Eastern strongholds, where it suffered its weakest ever result; an average of 10.1 percent across all five eastern states. Fifteen years after the East German Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) fused with ex-finance minister Oskar Lafontaine's split from the Social Democrats (SPD) to form a unified socialist force, Die Linke's future as a viable party and leading force in the European left is hanging by a thread.
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Comment: The analyses regarding Die Linke's setbacks in Germany parallel the internal strife within the Green Party of Canada and the New Democratic Party in the 2021 Canadian federal election, and the stagnation of a two-party system.
[JacobinMag.com, 2021-09-22] Canada Just Voted for More of the Same. Canada's federal election replaced a Liberal minority government, with nothing on offer for workers with . . . a Liberal minority government, with nothing on offer for workers. Neither establishment party offers working-class communities a brighter future.
[JacobinMag.com, 2021-09-19] Canada Needs to Have a Serious Talk About Trade Policy. Trade policy has received next to no attention this election, despite the post-pandemic collapse of corporate supply chains, the unequal distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, and the climate crisis. It will be impossible to confront these problems without a progressive trade policy.
Canada's short, largely unwanted, fourth-wave federal election campaign will come to a head on 2021-09-20. Over the past five weeks, the Justin Trudeau government's pandemic response, job and housing precarity, and climate change vied with trust in government as top issues for voters. Opposition parties are making connections between these challenges and our rigged corporate trade regime, but it takes some digging through their platforms to find it. ...
... Canada's New Democratic Party (NDP) has been a champion of fair trade for decades. But its proposals are generally not very detailed and often rely too much on abstract rhetoric. In its 1997 platform, for example, the NDP called for trade deals "that work for people, not against them." Drawing on demands from global labor and environmental movements, the party proposed including "real, enforceable and progressive social, labor and environmental standards" in new agreements.
These ill-defined calls for more progressive trade deals were never challenged because, by the late 1990s, the media had lost interest in trade policy and considered the issue of free trade settled. Conveniently enough, the idea that free trade was the only form of trade policy conceivable was exactly what the Liberal government of the day, business lobbyists, and pro-austerity economists wanted everyone to believe. In this ideological context, it was difficult for alternative trade visions to break through, at least during elections.
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[theConversation.com, 2021-10-03] Canada's first-past-the-post electoral system highlights once again the need for reform. | first past the post | Annamie Paul
The recent federal election produced the second minority government in a row - and the fifth since 2004. Neither Conservatives nor Liberals received more than 34 per cent of the popular vote nationwide, but parliamentary representation remains heavily distorted.
Canada's first-past-the-post electoral system works poorly when there are lots of three-way races and even some four-way races. Seats can be won with far less than a majority, and some regions are disproportionately represented by a single party. There is also a growing rural-urban divide in representation that is exacerbating political fault lines.
There is a compelling alternative used by many other nations: proportional representation, where seats in parliament reflect vote shares. There are three concerns, however: local representation, fringe parties and weak governments. Nonetheless, a smartly designed proportional system can overcome the first two concerns, and parliamentary protocol can address the third.
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[CBC.ca, 2021-09-21] Green Party Leader Annamie Paul loses her race, party sending at least 2 MPs to Ottawa. Elizabeth May keeps seat as party earns breakout win in Kitchener, Ontario.
| Annamie Paul[ ... snip ... ]
... Going into the election, the Greens were locked in internal conflict over Paul's leadership. The conflict, which burst into the public view after the departure of Fredericton MP Jenica Atwin to the Liberals, prompted a decline in popular support and contributed to significant financial challenges for the party. Paul said recently she considered resigning as leader because of the crisis, and the conflict between her and the party's federal executive bogged the Greens down for months.
They ran just 252 candidates across Canada's 338 ridings. There were no candidates in Newfoundland and Labrador, just one on the eastern arm of Quebec and two in Edmonton. The party released its platform costing just a day before the election, promising universal Pharmacare and a reformed universal long-term care system. Other platform planks included a guaranteed livable income and student debt cancellation.
Annamie Paul spent much of the campaign arguing that only the Greens had the ambition to tackle the climate crisis. The party pitched an emissions reduction target of 60 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030.
Elizabeth May led the Green Party to its best-ever result in 2019 [2019 Canadian federal election], when she was joined in Parliament by Paul Manly and Jenica Atwin. But the party had hoped for more seats, and Elizabeth May resigned as leader shortly after the election. That prompted a closely divided leadership in which Annamie Paul eventually emerged victorious. ...
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[Marxists Internet Archive: Marxists.org, 2008] Marxism Versus Liberalism: An Interview With H.G. Wells (1934-07-23). | local copy | Discussion, Hacker News: 2022-02-21
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